Chapter 1
"It could be the angel of death," I whispered to my cairn terrier, Napoleon, as I peered from the peephole at the black feather-winged figure on my front porch. "I mean, today is my thirtieth birthday."
The dark form shifted, and a bony wrist and hand came into view. The palm was extended upward, and the skin was shriveled and ghostly white.
As my eyes traveled the length of the long, curled fingers, the hand lowered slightly, and I saw a sickening sight.
A Mae West-style cigarette holder.
I sighed and rested my head against the door. "No such luck, buddy," I breathed. "It's Glenda."
"Open up, Miss Franki," Glenda O'Brien, my sixty-something landlady, called in her sultry, Southern voice. "The birthday fairy is here, and she's got a surprise for you."
At only nine-thirty a.m. on the Saturday I'd turned thirty I was in no mood for surprises. And judging from the way Napoleon was rubbing his eye with his paw, he wasn't up for any of Glenda's shenanigans either.
"Like it or not, sugar, you're no spring chicken anymore," she bellowed for the whole neighborhood to hear. "So let Miss Glenda in. She'll make it all better."
I was quite sure that she wouldn't, but I opened the door anyway. Along with the cigarette holder and the set of black wings, Glenda was clad in a studded black leather micro triangle top, a tiny tutu, and thigh-high boots. I couldn't decide whether she looked like a winged Hell's Angel or a geriatric Victoria's Secret model whose wings had been clipped. "Um, is that supposed to be your fairy costume?"
"I just made that crap up so you'd open the damn door," she said as she shoved a Bloody Mary into my hand.
I eyed the drink suspiciously. "What's this for?"
She batted her inch-long crimson eyelashes. "Aren't you hung over?"
"No, but I might as well be."
She put her hand on her tutued hip. "The night before I turned thirty, I drowned my sorrows in champagne, and I soaked in it too. A bubbly bath does wonders for a lady's soul and her skin, you know."
On my private investigator's salary, I couldn't afford a glass of champagne, much less a bathtub full. But Glenda was an ex-stripper who'd invested her money in real estate and antiques, including the fourplex we lived in and the not-so-chic seventies brothel pieces in my furnished apartment, so she could afford to bathe in booze. In fact, she had a six-foot-tall champagne glass in her living room for precisely that purpose. "Actually, I wouldn't know."
"Well, don't you fret about that, sugar," she said, waving a bony finger. "Because this year your birthday's gonna be full of fun surprises."
An alarm siren sounded in my head as she took a drag off her cigarette. "What exactly do you mean by 'full of fun surprises'?"
"I can't tell you that, now can I?" she exclaimed, exhaling smoke into my face as she spoke.
I sucked down half the spicy Bloody Mary to calm my nerves. Despite her age, Glenda was as wild as a sorority girl at a Mardi Gras-themed mixer, so one of her surprises could pack a real punch (and not of the delicious rum variety).
She tucked the cigarette holder behind her ear and stepped toward me. "Hold still, sugar."
I eyeballed the lit cigarette, which was dangerously close to my long, brown hair. "What for?"
"You'll see." She pulled a crisp dollar bill from the waistband of her tutu and removed a pin from the teensy triangle of leather tasked with covering her nipple and areola.
I, in turn, uttered a silent prayer to the wardrobe fairy that there would be no malfunction.
"Now stick out your chest."
"No way." I shielded my breasts from both the pin and the ash that was now dangling from the cigarette. We lived in New Orleans, so for all I knew she was about to perform some kind of stripper voodoo ritual to ward off the evil spirits of sagging and wrinkling. "Not until you tell me what you're going to do."
"Oh, quit your bellyachin'," she scolded as she shoved her hand down the V-neckline of my beige sweater and pinned the dollar above my left boob.
"What's that for?" I asked, feeling flustered and felt up. After all, she was the stripper, not me.
Glenda removed the cigarette holder from behind her ear. "It's a local tradition, Miss Franki. Someone pins a dollar to your shirt on your birthday, and then all day long people add money. Sometimes, fives, tens, even twenties."
I drained the other half of my drink as I pondered this possibility. Free money would definitely qualify as a "fun surprise."
My cell phone began to ring.
"You go on and get that, Miss Franki. I'm late for practice."
"Practice for what?" It was none of my business, but I had to know what kind of organized activity would require such a ghastly getup.
Her eyes lit up like a stripper stage. "In honor of St. Patrick's Day and St. Joseph's Day, my old manager at Madame Moiselle's has invited some of us more seasoned dancers to do a show called 'The Saints, Sinners, and Sluts Revue.'"
Madame Moiselle's was the Bourbon Street strip club where Glenda, dancing as "Lorraine Lamour," had made quite a name for herself in the sixties and seventies. She'd also been courted by a slew of prominent suitors, including a wealthy sheikh who asked her to join his harem after he'd watched her "1001 A-labia-n Nights" routine. Ever since she'd retired she'd been helping out at the club, teaching the new girls the tricks of the trade, but I knew that her real passion lay in performing.
"What are you supposed to be, like, a sinner-saint?" I asked, nodding toward her black wings.
Her face fell. "No, sugar," she replied. "I'm a slut. Isn't it obvious?"
"Of course," I reassured. "I don't know what I was thinking."
"No worries," she said with a flip of her long, platinum hair. The corners of her mouth formed a lewd grin. "You have a stimulating day, now."
Her wings flapped as she turned and strutted toward a waiting taxi.
I closed the door and wondered what she'd meant by "stimulating" as I searched for my now silent phone. I found it on the end table beneath a half-eaten bag of Hampton's Cajun Creole Hot Nuts. When I looked at the display, I breathed a sigh of relief—that is, until the phone started ringing again. I gave a sigh of resignation and stretched out on the chaise lounge before pressing answer. "Hi, Mom."
"Happy birthday, Francesca," she said, her usually shrill voice descending with every syllable until it was so low and lugubrious that it sounded like it wanted to jump off a ledge.
"Thanks," I replied, already trying to figure out a way to get her off the phone. These calls from home were typically a downer, but judging from the way this one had started, we were destined to sink to new depths of despair. "Is Dad there?"
"He's at the deli, dear," she said in a dejected tone. "The city shut off the water this morning with no warning, so he had to run some jugs of water over for the kitchen staff."
My parents, Brenda and Joe Amato, had owned Amato's Deli in Houston's Rice Village since before I was born. And if you were thinking that the water issue was the reason for my mother's depression, you were dead wrong. From the moment I graduated from the University of Texas when I was twenty-two, she'd been upset that I wasn't married. The thing was that both of my parents were first generation Italian-Americans, and they believed in the "old country" values. But they didn't hold a candle to my dad's eighty-three-year-old Sicilian mother, Carmela Montalbano. She declared me a zitella, which is Italian for old maid, at the advanced age of sixteen—almost half my life ago.
I suddenly realized that my mother had fallen silent, no doubt wallowing in maternal misery. So I said, "That's a bummer about the water, Mom, but I'm sure they'll turn it back on soon." Then I made the fatal mistake of asking, "Everything else okay?"
The silence continued, which was the signal that she was about to segue into the really bad news. "Well, I might as well tell you, Francesca." She gave a somber sigh. "Your nonna's in mourning."
Aaaand let the guilt games begin, I thought as I rested the back of my arm on my forehead. "Mom, she's been in heavy mourning since nonnu died twenty-one years ago."
"Yes, but she's gone into deeper mourning now that you've turned thirty. She's started wearing a black veil around the house, and she's taken a vow of silence."
A vow of silence? That was both worrisome and wonderful—worrisome because my nonna lived to meddle, which she couldn't do if she wasn't able to talk, and wonderful because, well, she couldn't meddle or talk. "So, what's she doing, then?"
"Sitting on the couch, holding her rosary, and staring at the portrait of the Virgin Mary," she replied as maudlin as a martyr. "Your father's just sick about it too. It hurts him terribly to see his mother in this state."
"Mom," I began, annoyed that she'd played the sad dad card, "why don't you remind nonna that I have a terrific boyfriend who I've been dating for over a year?" I asked, referring to my banker beau, Bradley Hartmann.
"You know your nonna, dear."
Yes, I did. For her, the mere act of dating was equivalent to living in sin. Single young women were to be betrothed at a suitable age (by early twentieth-century Sicilian standards) and strictly chaperoned until the wedding, which was supposed to take place the minute the marriage banns went into effect. "Well, she can't expect me to have a two-week engagement like she did. That's just prehistoric."
"It's a little hasty, I agree. But you've been with Bradley for a year now, Francesca." She paused. "For your sake, I hope he proposes at dinner tonight."
I bolted upright, causing Napoleon's ears to do the same. "What do you mean 'for your sake'? It's not like being unmarried is an affliction. And besides, you can't put that kind of pressure on me—or on Bradley, for that matter."
"Now don't confuse me with Mother Nature," she said, lapsing into lecture mode. "She's the one putting the pressure on you. After all, your biological clock has been ticking for some time now."
I clenched my teeth, and a sharp pain shot through one of my upper molars. "Ow! Dang it."
"What's the matter, dear?"
I put my hand to my face. "My tooth hurts."
"You have to take better care of yourself, Francesca," she chastised. "You're not a young girl anymore."
"Mom, that's been made painfully clear to me today," I snapped. "Listen, I need to get going. I'm working overtime this weekend."
"Well, try to have a nice day, dear," she said as though it would be next to impossible.
"Right," I said, biting the inside of my cheek to stop myself from saying something I'd only halfway regret. I also managed to spit out a "love you" because I did love my mother, but not especially in that moment.
I hung up the phone and pressed my molar with my thumb. There was something wrong, all right. I wanted to believe that it was my sweet tooth telling me that I should never have given up sweets for Lent, because I could seriously go for a jar of Nutella right now.
Instead, I grabbed the bag of Hot Nuts and tossed a couple into my mouth. No sooner had I bit down than the pain jolted into my sinus cavity. This was no sweet tooth—this was a sign. On top of being husbandless and childless, I was destined to be toothless too.
* * *
"I'm back, Franki," my boss and best friend Veronica Maggio called as she pushed open the door to her PI firm, Private Chicks, Inc., with a package under her arm.
I'd come to the office an hour earlier to escape the bad birthday juju at my apartment. Soon after I'd arrived and told Veronica about Glenda, my mom, and the saga of my nonna's vow of silence, she'd announced that she needed to run a few errands. So I had high hopes that she was going to right the wrongs of this morning's wayward well-wishers. "What have you got there?"
She saw me stretched out on one of the two opposing couches in the middle of the waiting room and stopped short. "Why are you lying down? Aren't you feeling well?"
I started to tell her that my tooth had begun hurting, but then I noticed that the package was a box from the Alois J Binder bakery on Frenchman Street, and I got a better idea. "I think I have low blood sugar," I rasped, going for a sick waif but sounding more like a steady smoker. "I haven't had any sweets since Mardi Gras, and that was over a month ago."
She smirked and placed the box on the reception desk beside the door. "Nice try, but I got you a plain croissant."
"Gah, Veronica," I said, pulling myself onto my elbows. "Sometimes you can be so cruel. Even my parents used to give me a birthday Lent reprieve when I was a teenager, and you know what strict Catholics they are."
"Yes, but you're not a teen anymore," she said as she looked inside the bakery box.
I scowled and lay back down. I should have known that Veronica would rain on my bedraggled birthday parade. When we first met in college, I thought that she was a bubbly blonde party girl, but I soon learned that she was all business and no pleasure. Case in point—she finished college and law school in about the same amount of time it took me to earn a bachelor's degree, and she did it with honors. "You know, you're the third person today to imply that I'm old, and it's only ten thirty."
Her smirk softened as she brought me the box. "I'm sorry you're having such a bad birthday. I don't know why you didn't take the day off."
"I could use the overtime pay, for one thing," I said, glancing pointedly at the lone dollar that hung from my shirt before taking the creamless croissant. "And I had to get out of that apartment. The baroque brothel décor was starting to remind me of an old funeral parlor, and with that creepy cemetery across the street, I felt like I was sitting around waiting to go to my grave."
Veronica rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on," she said, taking a seat on the opposite couch. "Turning thirty's not that bad. I did it six months ago, and I lived to tell about it."
"I know." I picked at the plain pastry. "Honestly, it's not the age that bothers me as much as the familial fallout from it."
"Well, look at the bright side," she said, pulling a vanilla cream napoleon from the box. "Now that your nonna has taken a vow of silence, you're going to get a much-needed break."
I shot her a skeptical look. With that delicious pastry in hand, she could afford to be optimistic.
The door swung open, and David Savoie, our part-time research assistant, entered, carrying two grocery bags. A junior at Tulane University, David could really put away the grub, but you'd never know it from his lanky frame.
"What've you got there, your lunch?" Veronica joked.
He flipped his brown bangs to one side. "Nah, Rouses Market donated this stuff for the food drive. It's mostly potato chips, pretzels, and pralines."
After swearing off sweets, I was so sick of savory snacks that I could just spit—except that I didn't have any saliva left because of all the salt. But my interest perked up at the mention of pralines. "What food drive?"
David placed the bag on his desk in the far left corner behind the couches. "My fraternity is collecting food for the poor for St. Joseph's Day."
I looked at Veronica to see whether she was as confused as I was. "Why is your computer science frat participating in a Catholic festival?"
"St. Joseph's Day isn't just a religious tradition in New Orleans, Franki," Veronica explained. "It's like St. Patrick's Day—the whole city celebrates it."
This was news to me. As far as I was aware, only Italian-American Catholics observed the day. "Okay, but why bring the food here?"
David sat on the back of the couch. "Veronica's letting me keep the donations in the conference room because my frat brothers keep eating them all."
"That's terrible," I said, resolving to slip across the hall to that conference room. I had no intention of stealing food from the poor, mind you. I just wanted to check those pralines—you know, to make sure they hadn't gone bad.
Veronica swallowed a bite of her pastry. "It's predictable behavior from a house full of hungry young men. That reminds me, David," she began, turning to hand him the open box, "I got you a little surprise from the bakery."
"A shoe sole! Dude, thanks," he exclaimed before shoving the sole-shaped pastry into his mouth. Then he retrieved the grocery bag, grabbed the conference room key from the reception desk drawer, and headed across the hall.
"Speaking of surprises, tell me what Glenda has planned for me," I ordered, giving Veronica my sincerest spill-it stare.
She licked cream from her finger in a ploy to avoid my gaze.
But I wasn't fooled. I was positive that she knew the score because she lived in Glenda's fourplex too. In fact, Veronica was the one who'd convinced me to rent the ground-floor apartment across from hers, sight (and cemetery) unseen. And despite the world of differences between her and Glenda, they were as tight as Gwyneth and Madonna—before their unfortunate split. "I'm serious. Out with it."
She pursed her lips and took a deep breath. "You know I'm no spoiler—"
"Just say it," I commanded through clenched teeth.
"Glenda hired you a male stripper," she gushed.
I dropped the croissant. "Why in the hell would she do that?"
She shrugged. "She thought you needed a little cheering up. And in Glenda's world, that can only mean one thing."
Yeah, nude, hard-bodied men slathered in oil. Of course, there was a time and a place for that sort of thing, but not on the day that I had plans with Bradley. "Please tell me that the stripper isn't going to show up during my date. I'm finally getting to go to the Sazerac Bar, and I don't want to get escorted out."
Veronica shook her head. "I'm sure he'll come before then. Glenda would want you to enjoy him all on your own."
"What'd she get me?" I asked—just so I could be prepared, of course. "A carpenter? A fireman?"
She averted her eyes. "A cop."
"What?" Before joining Private Chicks, I'd worked as a rookie police officer in Austin, Texas, and I hadn't stood a fighting chance at that job. "How does she not know that I'd rather have any profession than a cop? Even a Wall Street executive."
"I told her that," Veronica replied, smoothing her blue Versace skirt. "But she said that you needed the authoritative type to bring you out of your funk."
I chewed my thumbnail. "Well, I hope this guy shows up soon. Because from the way things are going, that date is going to be the only bright spot of my day." In addition to the Bloody Mary and the dollar.
"Maybe this will help make your day a little brighter," she said, pulling an envelope from her purse. "It's a half day at the spa. I went by there on my way to the bakery, and they agreed to work you in at noon."
"You're the best, Veronica," I exclaimed as I jumped up from my sofa sickbed and wrapped my arms around her—bending my 5' 10" frame at the waist. "That's almost better than a pastry."
She laughed and shook her head. "Only you would prefer a pastry to pampering. Now, I have plans tonight, but I want to hear all the details in the morning—about the spa and the dinner."
"You got it." For the first time today, I was starting to think that I might have something good to recount.
* * *
"What kind of moron would leave their car running in the middle of the street?" I exclaimed to myself. I'd been standing outside Private Chicks for ten minutes, waiting for the owner of the neon orange Nissan Cube that was blocking my 1965 Mustang convertible. Because the firm was located on Decatur Street in the French Quarter, traffic was always an issue. And it didn't help that an Italian restaurant occupied the first two floors of the three-story brick building we were located in. I liked their pizza and pasta but not their patrons, who were prone to parking their cars in the street while picking up to-go orders.
I looked at the time on my phone as I paced the sidewalk. It was twenty till noon. If I didn't leave soon, I could kiss my spa appointment arrivederci.
A thirty-something guy holding a green beer and wearing a matching T-shirt that read, "The leprechauns made me do it," approached from the other side of the street. "Hey, uh, is this the parade route?"
"Parade?" I repeated.
"Yeah." He wiped his nose with his wrist. "The parades for St. Patrick's Day and St. Joseph's Day start today at one o'clock."
I blinked. "They do?"
He took a swig of his beer. "They're always the Saturday before so everyone can get in on the action."
"You don't say," I said, narrowing my eyes at the Nissan. If a bunch of floats came down Decatur, I'd miss my massage for sure.
"Sorry to have bothered you," he said.
"No problem," I replied as I zeroed in on the real bother.
Without further ado, I marched to the driver's side of the Nissan and yanked open the door. As I settled into the seat and released the parking brake, I noticed an open box marked "Erzulie's Authentic Voodoo." Curious, not to mention a little concerned, I peered inside and saw around twenty see-through fabric bags containing incense sticks, candles, packets of white crystals, and little vials of liquid. The bags were marked "3-day ritual spell kits," and they were for everything from gaining wealth to garnering protection.
"What a wack job," I whispered as I pressed the gas pedal and pulled the car forward.
"That's my car," a gruff female voice cried.
I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the Nissan's middle-aged owner. How did I know it was her? My first clue was the teased, tangerine hair that was strikingly reminiscent of Endora from Bewitched.
"Help! Police!" She waved her purple-caftaned arms. "Stop that thief!"
I pulled up the parking brake and got out of the car just in time to see a thirty-something cop rounding the corner—and buttoning his shirt?
"Officer," she huffed, grasping his forearm, "this young woman was trying to steal my car."
His ice blue eyes looked through me as he fastened his top button. "Is this true, ma'am?"
I hesitated for a moment, not because I was guilty as accused but because a) I was annoyed by that "ma'am," and b) there was something weird about this cop. No officer I knew got dressed on duty, and he seemed uneasy in the uniform, maybe because it didn't fit him. His biceps were straining against the sleeves, and his pecs looked like they were going to pop out of his shirt.
Then it hit me. This was no street cop—this was the stripper cop.
Instantly annoyed, I shifted my weight to one leg and turned to the witchy woman. "Look, I'm late for an appointment, and your car was blocking mine. So I moved it, okay?"
The counterfeit cop cleared his throat. "Actually, it's not okay."
I gave a surly sigh. "I know, I know. I've been a very bad girl, and I need to be punished. But that's not gonna happen, because I'm going to the spa."
I opened the door of my Mustang and flopped into the seat.
"Ma'am," he began in a terse tone, "I need you to exit the vehicle."
I arched a brow. "Or what? You'll cuff me and teach me a lesson?"
He reached into his back pocket and flipped open his wallet.
My stomach tried to take off running as I stared at the New Orleans PD badge, which was as real as the regulation baton on his hip.
"You're under arrest for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle."
As he proceeded to read me my rights, my brain began to process the situation. To celebrate my thirtieth birthday, I wasn't going to the spa or to the Sazerac. I was going to the slammer.
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