Amaretto Amber (Franki Amato Mysteries Book 3) (10 page)

I turned and knocked on the door. I smirked when I realized that it had been freshly painted haint blue—kind of like Carnie's eyelids—while the white paint on the rest of the house was peeling. According to a Southern superstition, the blue-green color was believed to keep "haints," or evil spirits, from entering a house. I wondered how that had been working out for Maybe and Curaçao.

The door opened to reveal a tipsy-looking bleached blonde in high-heeled slippers and a sheer pink robe that left nothing to the imagination. She swayed slightly and shielded her eyes from the afternoon sun with a half-empty bottle of wine. "Yeah?"

I cringed at her high-pitched voice. "Are you Maybe, uh, Baby?"

"Who's askin'?" she squeaked.

"I'm Franki Amato, a local private investigator, and this is Carnie…" I hesitated because I'd about had it with the nonsensical names. "…Vaul. We're looking for Curaçao."

"I ain't seen her for a few days." She started to close the door, but Carnie shoved it open with her huge hand.

"We're going to need a few more minutes of your time," Carnie growled.

Maybe looked so shocked that you could have knocked her over with one of Carnie's feathers. I couldn't tell whether she was surprised because Carnie had blocked the door or because she was drunk enough to have initially mistaken her for a woman.

I held up one of my business cards. "I'm investigating the murder of a dancer named Amber Brown, and I have reason to believe that Curaçao is involved and maybe—I mean,
possibly
—even in serious danger. Can we come in?"

She was silent for a moment, then she waved us into the living room with the wine bottle.

I stepped inside onto a sea of dirty clothes that covered every square inch of the floor, and I held my breath just in case I was kicking up any airborne diseases. I figured the fewer times I inhaled the better.

Carnie entered behind me and glanced from the floor to a stained white couch. "If that's your only sofa, then I'll stand."

For once I had to agree with her. "I'll make this quick," I said, mainly because I wanted to limit my breathing. "Did you know Amber Brown?"

Maybe took a swig from her bottle. "Only what I heard from Curaçao, and she hated her."

Carnie's blue-shadowed eyelids lowered. "Was this because of that client Amber supposedly stole?"

Maybe took another swallow of wine. "The rich oil guy?"

Carnie shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe."

"What?" Maybe asked.

I rolled my eyes. "No, Maybe, she meant 'perhaps.' And yes, Carnie, he's a wealthy oil baron named Shakey. Which reminds me, Maybe, do you know his last name or contact information?"

"What do I look like?" she shrilled. "A dictionary?"

While I struggled to come up with a reply, Carnie pointed to a picture frame on a shelf beside a nesting doll. "That's the woman who was harassing Amber."

I followed Carnie's finger to a picture of a platinum blonde. She was the woman I'd seen leaving the club the morning Veronica bailed me out of jail. I turned to Maybe. "Is this Curaçao?"

She nodded. "The one and only."

"What's her real name?" Carnie asked.

Maybe tried but failed to arch her eyebrow. "That
is
her real name."

I started to take a deep breath and then thought better of it. "She was asking you for her legal name."

Maybe crossed one arm, but the other fell to her side. "Well, how should I know what she goes by in court?"

Once again, it wasn't the reply I was expecting, but it was clear enough.

"And I thought you said this was gonna be quick," she protested.

"Don't get your G-string in a knot," Carnie barked, "because Lord knows you need to put it on. Now, we just need a few more minutes."

Maybe groaned and flopped onto a blue beanbag chair in a position that my mother would have described as "extremely unladylike."

Carnie put her hands on her hips. "Guuurl, I can see your seafood platter. You need to sit up straight and clamp those legs shut tight like a clam shell."

Maybe pulled her see-through robe together as though that would have solved the problem. "You sound just like my mother."

"That's because I
am
a mother," Carnie said, brushing her curls back with her hand.

My head snapped up at that announcement.

"A
drag
mother," Carnie clarified as she shot me a sideways stare.

"What's
that
?" Maybe asked, her head tipping precariously to one side.

Carnie fluffed her breast feathers. "A mentor to young drag queens."

How I pitied those poor girls.

"Well, I hope you're not as controlling as my mom." Maybe put the wine bottle close to her "seafood platter" and picked at the label. "Or Amber's."

"Amber had a mother?" Carnie and I exclaimed in unison.

"Uh-huh," she replied, her head tipping in the opposite direction. "Curaçao heard her talking on the phone to her mom a couple of times. She said she sounded like a total control freak."

I crouched beside the beanbag. "Did she happen to catch her name or the name of a town where she might live?"

Maybe's eyes seemed to cross as she tried to focus. "She said her name was Mama."

Carnie and I exchanged a look.

"Why did Curaçao think Amber's mother was controlling?" I pressed.

Maybe's head fell backwards onto the beanbag. "She said she could tell by what Amber was saying that her mom was telling her how to get rid of Curaçao."

"Get rid of her?" Carnie echoed, moving to stand in front of Maybe.

"You know, make her go away," she explained. "But Curaçao said she wasn't going anywhere until Amber paid her back for stealing Shakey."

"How could she do that?" I asked. "With money?"

"No, Curaçao didn't want that," she replied, waving her wine. "She wanted Amber's necklace."

My pulse picked up, and I glanced at Carnie. "Did she get it?"

Maybe chugged the rest of her wine. "Beats me."

Carnie leaned over the beanbag. "What did she tell you about this necklace?"

She dropped the empty bottle onto the clothes-covered floor. Then she plucked a feather from Carnie's dress and wiped her mouth with it. "Just that Amber stole it from some drag queen with serious RBF."

Carnie's eyes narrowed to slits and her cheeks turned blood red. And with her mad Mimi makeup and Dolly Parton 'do, she looked like she'd walked right off the set of the '80s horror flick
Killer Klowns from Outer Space
.

I looked at Maybe, whose face was frozen with fear. "What's RBF?"

"Resting Bitch Face," she whisper-whined.

Well, if the "drag queen" description hadn't been enough to identify Carnie, the "RBF" certainly had.

Before Carnie could flip her wig and Maybe could flood her basement (drag for "wet herself"), I yanked Carnie out of the house and wrestled her into the car.

As I sped from the duplex, I wondered how I was going to find Amber's mother, and where I was going to look for Curaçao next. Because I'd just learned one thing for sure. Curaçao had ripped that necklace from Amber's neck the night of the murder. What I needed to confirm now was whether she'd killed her too.

"What is this place?" Carnie squawked from the sidewalk. "A Soviet waxing salon?"

I pulled myself from the car and winced. I'd jacked up my back trying to get Carnie into the Mustang at Maybe's house, and it wasn't the only casualty of the scuffle. Carnie's feathers were ruffled—as in the ones on her dress—and a lot of them were broken. I just hoped that none of my vertebrae were. "What are you even talking about?"

"Guuurl, look at the door," she ordered. "Vaxing for Vomen?"

"That's weird," I said as I pulled Amber's credit card bill from my bag. "I drove by here a few days ago."

Carnie plucked her compact from the feather nest between her breasts and checked her crown. "I thought we were looking for Waxing Salon."

"That's the name on the charge," I replied, glancing from the bill to the sign, "but the address is a match. I guess whoever scratched off the other half of those
W
's also removed the business name."

"Well, let's go in and get this over with." She pulled down her wig and yanked up her dress. "But from the sound of things, I'd best look elsewhere for my waxing needs."

As I pushed open the door, I felt a rush of gratitude for whoever had altered that sign.

"What'd I tell ya?" Carnie breathed as she entered the waiting room behind me. "It looks like Little Moscow in here."

She was right. The interior was a drab gray with chunky antique furniture, and the only decorations were a portrait of Gorbachev on the wall and a hammer and sickle flag in the pencil holder on the desk. Nevertheless, I found the austere, utilitarian atmosphere to be a vast improvement over Maybe's house.

A sixty-something woman with spiky, maroon-tinted hair and the body of a matryoshka doll emerged from behind a black curtain. "You vant vax?"

My eyebrows shot up. So now I knew that the other half of those
W
's had
not
been scratched off. "Uh, no. I'm Franki Amato," I said, handing her my business card, "and I'm investigating the murder of a young woman named Amber Brown."

She scrutinized my card like a comrade checking papers at a Communist checkpoint and then slipped it into the pocket of her smock. "Nadezhda Dmitriyeva."

The second she said her name it occurred to me that she looked like Boris from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show but sounded like Natasha. "Are you the owner of this salon?"

Nadezhda sneer-smiled revealing a missing eye tooth, making me glad I had that appointment with Dr. Lessler. "I specialize in Brazilian and Sicilian."

She caught me off guard with that revelation. I'd heard of the Brazilian, but based on what I knew about Sicilian-American women, the practice of bikini waxing was as foreign as foot-binding.

"That's good to know and all," Carnie interjected. "But like the woman said, we're here to talk to you about Amber."

Nadezhda's dark eyes bore into mine as she jerked her head in Carnie's direction. "Who is him?"

Carnie gasped and drew a hand to her bosom. "Listen, Babushka. You've got a lot of nerve throwing shade like that with your Sharon Osbourne 'do."

I held my breath as I waited for the outburst, but the hair jab rolled off Nadezhda like vodka off a Cossack's back.

She pursed her lips and clasped her hands behind her. "What means 'trow shade'?"

"To criticize," Carnie replied, smoothing her feathers. "In this case, my lady look."

Nadezhda raised a well-waxed brow and turned to me. "Amber was regular client," she announced. "For one year."

Something about her sudden proclamation made me suspect that she'd been rehearsing her answers. I decided to put her honesty to the test. "When was the last time you saw her?"

She jutted out her lower lip. "Two weeks since today."

The timeframe corresponded to the charge on the credit card bill, but it was no guarantee that she'd tell me the truth about anything else. "Amber started coming to your salon at around the same time she quit a job at Madame Moiselle's Strip Club. She supposedly wanted to quit the sex industry and 'go clean.' Did she ever mention that to you?"

Nadezhda shook her head, but she was avoiding my gaze.

"What about her financial situation?" I pressed. "Do you happen to know where she was working this past year or if someone was giving her money?"

She walked to the reception desk and began unloading supplies from a cardboard box. "Not my business."

My instincts told me that Nadezhda made everything her business, so I tried another angle. "I know that clients often confide in their estheticians. Did Amber ever seem worried about anything? Or did she mention any problems she was having?"

"She had problem with her mama," she replied, pointing a package of waxing sticks at me. "Ze woman is Nazi."

"Talk about the Commie calling the Fascist black," Carnie intoned as she pretended to admire the Gorbachev portrait.

A pain shot through my backside that I was pretty sure had nothing to do with my injury. "Can you elaborate on that, Nadezhda?"

Her dark brow furrowed. "She call too much. Every time Amber come here, zey fight on phone."

I, of all people, knew that it wasn't unusual for mothers and daughters to argue, but I found it telling that Amber's mother had made such a bad impression on at least two people, and especially on a tough woman like Nadezhda. "Do you know anything about her mother? A name or an address?"

"
Nyet
." She pulled a tub of cream wax from the box.

I swallowed my disappointment as I pulled my pad and pen from my bag. "What kinds of things did they fight about?"

She shrugged. "Sometimes money, sometimes her man friend."

"Wait." Carnie held up her hand in a stopping motion. "You mean Amber had a boy toy?"

She put her hand on her hip. "Zat's right, darlink. What else?"

"No need to get nasty, Nadezhda," Carnie replied, fluffing her curls.

I sighed and resolved to beg Veronica to free me from the cohort cross she was making me bear. "What can you tell us about this man?"

"Nusink," she replied, resuming her unpacking.

I wondered whether that was because she didn't know anything or because she didn't want to tell me. "Do you remember anything about Amber's demeanor during her last appointment? Like, was she happy or depressed?"

Nadezhda took a seat behind the desk. "Her mama call," she replied in a low voice. "Zey have big argument about necklace."

"What about the necklace?" Carnie asked, rising to her feet.

"Her mama did not like." She shook her index finger. "She tell her not to wear."

Carnie gasped. "My mother designed that necklace, and it was fierce."

"Your mama design pentagram?" Nadezhda's lips curled. "Not surprise."

Carnie's clown brows rose to her wigline, and my mind flashed to the stained glass pentagram at Erzulie's.

"Nadezhda," I began, trying to keep a neutral tone, "do you think there was any special significance to the pentagram? Or was it a fashion statement?"

She looked me square in the eyes. "You tell me."

The door opened, and an elderly gentleman with hairy ears entered and did a double take when he caught sight of Carnie in all her yellow-feathered splendor.

Carnie held his gaze in a seductive stare and rubbed her hands down her Big Bird belly.

I rolled my eyes and grasped the door handle. "We'll leave you to your work," I said, hoping that the man was there to get his lobes weed-whacked. "But I'll be in touch."

The minute we got outside Carnie cornered me. "What do you make of that pentagram?"

"I'm not sure," I replied, heading for the car.

But that wasn't entirely true. Because if the pentagram necklace meant what I thought it did, then this case was about to take a dark turn.

*   *   *

"Bradley!" I exclaimed as he leaned over and planted a kiss on my cheek.

"I figured I'd find you here," he said as he slid next to me in the booth at Thibodeaux's Tavern, aka my home away from home thirty steps from my front door.

I snuggled up to him. "I thought you weren't going to be back until later tonight?"

"I caught an earlier flight." He winked at Veronica who was sitting across from me and held out his hand to her boyfriend. "Bradley Hartmann."

Dirk flashed a movie-star smile. "Dirk Bogart," he said with a handshake. "You're with Ponchartrain Bank, right?"

"For the time being," Bradley replied, slipping his arm around my shoulders.

I shifted uncomfortably. I couldn't tell whether that was a casual remark or an indication that something had gone really wrong at the board meeting, but I knew that it wasn't the right time to ask, especially if I was part of his "professional problem."

"I'm not interrupting, am I?" Bradley asked as his eyes searched my face.

"Actually, we both are." I glanced apologetically at Veronica. "I saw Veronica and Dirk through the window as I was pulling into the driveway, so I decided to pop in and say hello."

Veronica looked from my empty plates to Bradley. "That was an hour ago," she observed drily. "I guess you know that Brenda and Carmela arrived last night for an unexpected visit?"

"No, but I thought I recognized that Ford Taurus parked out front," Bradley replied with a twinkle in his eye.

For reasons I could never understand, he always looked amused when the subject of my family came up, which was pretty incredible given that when he'd met them last Christmas my mom and nonna had tried to "mafia-wife" him into marrying me. At least
he
could laugh about it.

"Anyway," Veronica began, "Dirk's a gemologist, and he was telling us about the Amber Room."

Bradley cocked a brow. "The room the Nazis stole from the Russians?"

"That's the one," Dirk replied with a nod. "Although the Nazis felt that Germany never should've given it to Russia, which is why they packed it up all six tons of it in '41 and moved it to Königsberg Castle."

I stirred my Campari and soda. "If they took the room back, then where did it go?"

Dirk ran his fingers through his reddish-blond hair. "That's the question politicians, researchers, and treasure hunters have been asking since 1945. The Nazis moved the room again when the Allies began bombing Königsberg, and no one has seen it since."

Bradley turned to me. "Why are you so interested in the Amber Room?"

I averted my eyes. Since Veronica and I were under orders from Detective Sullivan not to discuss certain details of the crime scene, I couldn't let on that this was connected to my case. "I don't know." I hedged, feigning an interest in my drink straw. "It's been in the news a lot lately."

Veronica cleared her throat. "Franki, Dirk says that before the Nazis made it to Catherine Palace, the Russian curator of the room tried to take it apart to hide it, but the amber was so brittle that it starting cracking and splintering, so he had it covered with fake walls instead. He catalogued 28 amber shards that had broken off various parts of the room."

I looked up from my straw and met her gaze.

"I'm assuming that more pieces broke off when the Nazis took it apart too," she added with a slight nod.

I knew what Veronica was trying to tell me—that Carnie's grandmother could very well have picked up a piece of the Amber Room.

"Just think," Dirk said with a shake of his head. "We could all retire on what one of those shards is worth today."

"But isn't amber prehistoric tree resin?" Bradley asked. "I mean, how much could that be worth?"

"The history of this amber is what makes it priceless, and I'm not only referring to the mystery," Dirk replied with a knowing look. "It was a masterpiece of eighteenth century artistry that was widely considered to be the Eighth Wonder of the World. And, in fact, experts agree that the replica of the room the Russians unveiled in 2003 doesn't hold a candle to the 1716 version. Today at auction, a tiny piece of the original room could fetch millions."

I almost coughed up my Campari. Maybe had said that Curaçao wanted the necklace as payback for Amber stealing her man, and if Curaçao had even the slightest inkling of what the pendant was worth, it could've given her more incentive to kill Amber.

Phillip, the bartender, approached Bradley. "Yo, can I get you something, bro?"

He tapped his fingers on the table. "I'll take an Abita. Jockamo IPA, if you've got it."

"Coming right up." Phillip flipped his long, dirty-blond bangs to one side and headed for the bar.

Bradley turned his attention back to Dirk. "Isn't there supposed to be a curse on anyone who searches for the Amber Room?"

I stiffened.
Why was everything coming up curses?

"That's the rumor." Dirk smiled and raised his eyebrows. "And considering the fate of some of the people who've looked for it, it would certainly give me pause."

I scooted closer to Bradley. "Um, what do you mean 'fate'?"