Amaretto Amber (Franki Amato Mysteries Book 3) (18 page)

He grinned and held up a five-dollar bill. "You might want to put this in the bank," he said as he slid the money into my thong. "Because it looks like your stripper career is going belly up, pardon the pun, just like your PI career."

A camera flash went off in my face, and when the light spots cleared my tiger's blood ran cold.

Bradley was making his way to the stage, and his eyes were darker than Iris's tattooed scleras.

I scuttled toward Glenda, but I slipped and collapsed. I watched in alarm as the snake slithered to the stage and as Bradley took a swing at Detective Sullivan.

The crowd went wild. Within seconds, green beer and top hats began to fly as a bar brawl broke out.

Iris swooped down and scooped up the snake and me and whisked us off the stage, depositing us in front of Glenda.

She crossed her arms and tapped a yellow-bowed stiletto. "Caught a tiger by the tail, didn't you, sugar? Too bad it wasn't the killer."

*   *   *

"They don't call us the Fighting Irish for nothing, eh, Sullivan?" A ginger officer joked as he loaded three handcuffed club patrons in shamrock suits into a paddy wagon outside Madame Moiselle's.

The detective laughed. "Ain't that the truth, Sean?"

I clutched my coat lapel to stop myself from going all
Raging Bull
on them and kept my eyes trained on the squad car that they'd loaded Bradley into fifteen minutes before. I hadn't spoken to anyone since he'd been arrested—not even to Bradley. And like the Irishmen in the club, I was fighting mad—at Glenda for suggesting that I strip, at myself for agreeing to the stupid scheme, at Bradley for coming to the club after I'd told him I had a "stakeout," and at Detective Sullivan for arresting him.

Sensing my animosity, the detective strode over to me. "Speaking of the Irish, you must have some of our luck. Otherwise, you'd be sitting in the back of that squad car with your boyfriend."

"This isn't about luck," I seethed as I rubbed my right fist, which was aching to punch him. "I didn't do anything wrong, and neither did he. You provoked him when you put that bill in my…uh…thong."

A corner of his mouth lifted. "Well, he's going to have to get used to that sort of thing now that you've taken up stripping. Fortunately for him, your business partner's an attorney, because he's going to need one." He paused and gave me a penetrating stare. "And you will too if you interfere in my investigation again."

He spun on his heel and climbed into the passenger seat of the squad car. Moments later, the engine roared to life. As the car pulled away, I watched numbly as Bradley disappeared into the night and, I feared, from my life. We'd been through a lot, but I wasn't sure how we'd survive this. Because when the bank got word of his arrest, heads were going to roll—his first and then mine. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it might be in his best interest if I rolled right out of his life.

"I thought we could use a drink," a squeaky female voice said.

I turned and found Maybe Baby standing next to me with two Hurricanes from Pat O'Brien's Bar. She was wearing a long, black nightgown with a fuzzy pink coat, a green wide-brimmed hat, and red heart-shaped sunglasses. Anywhere but Bourbon Street she would've looked conspicuous.

"Thanks." I took a go-cup from her hand and gulped down half of the red liquid. "But this won't take the sting off seeing my boyfriend get arrested."

"Gee, I'm sorry." She put a hand on my arm. "I didn't know."

I looked at my drink. "Then what's this for?"

She fished the cherry garnish from her cup and popped it into her mouth. "I saw you dance."

Tilting my head in concession, I raised my glass, and we made a silent toast to my epic stripping failure. I was no Blaze Starr, but for the record, I'm sure Blaze's landlady never slipped a snake on her seconds before she took the stage. "You haven't told me why
you
need a drink."

Maybe pushed stray blonde locks from her face with the back of her hand. "Somebody broke into my house last night, and I had to climb out my window in my nightie."

My gut lurched to alert me—in case my brain hadn't already—that this was probably no random break-in. "You haven't been home since?"

"Well, yeah." She gestured to her ensemble. "I went back this afternoon to change."

I glanced again at her gown and took another swig of my drink to prime me for the rest of the conversation. "Do you know who it was?"

"It could've been the maniac who killed Amber and Curaçao." Her brow furrowed as she chewed her straw. "Or my landlord."

My head jerked forward. "Does your landlord break into your house often?"

"Only when rent is due," she replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

Glenda was looking a lot better as a landlady—stripping, snake, and all. "What did the police say?"

Maybe looked at me and closed one eye, like she was trying to bring me into focus. "What've the cops got to do with this?"

"Um, their business is solving crime?" I suggested.

"You're funny, you know that?" She sat on the curb in the middle of the partying pedestrians and spread her legs.

Against my better judgment, I took a seat beside her on the filthy sidewalk—the partiers were known to puke, and who knew what else. As we sat in silence, I sincerely hoped her seafood platter wasn't showing. On a street like Bourbon, that would be like offering an open tab to a serious drunk, and I didn't need any more trouble. "So, did they take anything?"

She swallowed a half-gallon of her Hurricane. "Who?"

I sighed and stared at the pavement. "The person who broke into your house."

"Not that I could tell," she replied, swishing her drink in her cup.

That struck me as odd. But given Maybe's less than stellar housekeeping skills, I wasn't sure whether she would've noticed if an actual hurricane had blown through the place. Also, the intruder could've been scared away, especially if he or she hadn't expected her to be home. "What did they do? Jimmy the door?"

She put her drink down and frowned. "Who's Jimmy?"

"Oh, no one in particular." I pursed my lips and pondered how to rephrase the question. "What did this intruder do to actually get inside your house?"

"They broke the window in the room where Curaçao had been staying."

I bit my lower lip. Maybe was in serious danger, because the killer was looking for something, and my money was on the amber pendant. "Maybe, if Curaçao did steal that necklace from Amber, where would she have hidden it?"

She wrinkled her mouth and widened her eyes. "Your guess is as good as mine."

I folded onto my knees, thinking that the pendant might never be recovered. "Can you think of any reason that she would've been wearing the copy of the amber necklace when she died?"

"Beats me." She looked down at her clear plastic stilettos. "Curaçao told me that real amber would protect you since it was the stone of the mother goddess, but obviously that fake amber didn't do any good."

My back straightened. "What mother goddess?"

"It's got something to do with that hocus pocus stuff she was into," she replied as she grabbed her drink.

Shocked, I sat my cup on the sidewalk. "Why didn't you tell me about this the other day?"

Her fuzz-covered shoulders raised into a shrug. "Because I was drunk, I guess."

I gave her the onceover, marveling at the implication that she was sober.

"Also because I'm not sure how much she really believed in that witchcraft business." She drained her drink and wiped her mouth with her wrist. "Her mom is the one who got her into it."

"Her mom?" My gut was no longer lurching—it was doing a lap dance. "Do you know her name?"

She crunched a piece of ice. "Mama."

This time I wasn't annoyed with her reply. I was bewitched. "Maybe, what else can you tell me about Curacao's mother?"

She yawned and pulled her phone from her pocket. "Well, she wasn't her real mom," she replied, sounding bored as she checked her display. "Just some lady."

My head began to spin—but only partly because of the four ounces of rum I'd imbibed.
Was there a witch acting as a mother figure to Amber and Curaçao? If so, was it Nadezhda?

As hard as it was for me to imagine, she was like a mother to Eugene. Plus, she'd refused to answer my question about Amber being a witch that day at the salon. But if she had been a mother to the girls, I doubted that she would've let them call her by the Southern
mama
. Something about the affectionate term didn't jive with her harsh personality.

"You okay?" Maybe asked, nudging me in the side.

I nodded, even though I wasn't okay at all. "Can I use your phone?"

"Be my guest." She entered her passcode and handed me the device.

Out of curiosity, I pulled up her browser and googled the Russian word for mother. As I'd suspected, it looked somewhat severe—
мать
, pronounced
mought.
But what I hadn't expected to see was the more commonly used informal version of the term.

Мама
, the pronunciation of which was all too clear.

"Francesca Lucia Amato!" a deep voice bellowed.

I started to come to, still in a crab crawl position.
Why was I onstage again? And how did that guy in the audience know my real name?

The boa constrictor began to slither on my belly, and my eyes flew open. I wasn't at Madame Moiselle's—I was lying in my claw-foot bathtub in my pajamas with my arms and legs hanging over the sides.

And the cord from my nonna's enema bag was on my stomach.

I hurled the bag across the room as I hopped from the tub.

But wait.
I cocked my head to the side.
If that wasn't a strip club customer heckling me, who—

The bathroom door burst open with a bang, and my mother marched in.

"Is it
true
?"

She had venom in her voice.

"Did you sss…sss…sss…?"

She even hissed like a snake.

"
Strip
?"

I was too terrified to move. When my mom was this mad, she was Medusa incarnate.

"Answer me, young lady," she commanded through clenched teeth.

I averted my gaze because, like her Greek mythology alter ego, I was pretty sure she could turn me to stone. "Mom, I'm investigating a case—"

"Don't try to deny it," she interrupted in a kind of low growl. "Bruno saw you."

My fear was replaced with contempt. The second I'd heard that Santina had told him I was working at Madame Moiselle's, I knew there'd be fallout. And thanks to that rat, I was backed into a corner—er, a bathroom—by a gorgon. "All right." I sighed, resigned. "I had to strip for work."

"
Mamma mia, che disgrazia
!" Nonna screamed from the doorway.

I started, unaware that she'd snuck up on us like that.

"Look at what you've done!" My mother gestured to my nonna, who chose that moment to fall to her knees and hold her hands up to heaven.

"
Che Dio ci aiuti
!" Nonna wailed, asking God to help us—for emphasis.

An assortment of supportive shrieks and laments ensued from the nonne in the kitchen.

"This is just great." I threw my arms in the air. "I'm a grown woman in trouble with her mom for doing her job. Tell me," I said, resting a finger on my cheek, "did Bruno get in trouble for going to a strip club to check out my semi-nude bod?"

My mother gasped as more cries came from the kitchen, and someone started moaning.

Nonna did the only thing she could do—whip out her rosary and begin to recite.

"He went there to try to talk you out of ruining your reputation and our family name," she rasped. "Get your mind out of the gutter, Francesca."

I was beginning to smell a double standard, which, in addition to garlic, was a common odor in Italian households. "Oh, of course." I sneered. "Because Santina's son is a saint."

It was no doubt my imagination, but I would've sworn that my mother's face turned a greenish hue. And I was halfway expecting snakes to sprout from her head.

"The fact that you would disrespect that nice man tells me that you're not the person I thought you were." She jabbed her finger in my chest as a preface to her classic closer, "Just wait till your father hears about this."

I sunk onto the edge of the tub as she stormed past my nonna, who stopped praying and glanced toward the kitchen. Then she clambered to her feet and rushed into the room.

"Franki," she whispered, "did-a that detective really give-a you a five-a dollar bill-a?"

"Uuuuhhhh," I uttered, wondering whether it was a trick question. "Yes?"

"
Evvai
!" she cheered with a fist pump. Then she retrieved her enema bag from the floor beside the sink and stepped into the hallway, making sure she was in full view of the other nonne. "You take-a your clothes off in-a public again," she said, shaking the bag at me for show, "and I'm-a gonna wrap-a this thing around your neck-a,
capito
?"

I stared blankly at the bag because, by this time, it had basically been all over my body. "I understand, Nonna."

With a satisfied nod, she tossed the bag into the sink and returned to the kitchen.

I closed the door and climbed back into the tub. My heart ached about the situation with Bradley, and my head ached from arguing with my mom—and from a hangover. After I'd collected my stripping money (twenty-four bucks counting the nineteen singles dropped during the brawl, which was better than that dollar I'd gotten for my birthday), I drowned my sorrows in a second round of Hurricanes with Maybe. Then I asked Glenda to let Maybe stay with her until the murders were solved, a decision I was starting to regret. Now I was going to have to deal with my Medusa Mom and Ninja Nonna until St. Joseph's Day was over, because the odds of me getting Maybe out of a giant champagne glass were slim to none.

The door burst open again, and I sat up in the tub.

Glenda ran into the room and latched the lock behind her. With a pink polka dot ruffled apron tied around her waist and another around her chest, she looked like something from a fashion-forward 1950s mag—except for the stripper shoes that said
Pay Me.

"What's happened now?" I nestled back into the tub. "Did the Lilliputians tie you up in the kitchen curtains?"

"Miss Ronnie asked me to come get you because you haven't been answering your phone." The aprons rose and fell with her breath. "But right after I got here, Santina showed up with the strippergram, and the mood turned ugly in the kitchen. You see what happened to me," she said, gesturing to her apron dress. "So, you'd best shake a leg, sugar."

I shot her a look. "My shaking days are over."

She shot me a look right back. "I'm telling you, we have got to go. Besides, Miss Ronnie has news about Bradley."

My pulse perked up. "She's spoken to him?"

"It's 9 a.m., Miss Franki." She put her hand on her hip. "She's already been to the jail and had him released."

I sprung to my feet. "Let me change out of my pajamas."

"There's no time for that," she said, pulling me from the tub by the arm. "The way those women are slapping and pounding that dough makes me think that our buns are the next things they're gonna bake."

Glenda had a point. Nine nonne conferring in a kitchen about a fallen female family member was a recipe for disaster—in this case, mine. And I had an idea of the type of rehabilitation plan they'd cook up.

I grabbed her by the biceps in the grip of panic. "We've got to get out of here before they call in a priest for an exorcism."

*   *   *

The plain
pain perdu
seemed to mock me from my plate. French toast without syrup was like a life without love, which was what I was facing at the moment. "Sullivan's really going to press charges against Bradley?"

"I'm afraid so." Veronica pushed the butter dish toward me across her rattan kitchen table. "Battery against a police officer."

Glenda, who'd forgone French press coffee in favor of champagne, slammed her flute onto the glass tabletop. "How long a stretch in the jug are we talking?"

My head snapped in her direction. Sometimes she reminded me of Ruth—and of an ex-con.

"Typically, six months," Veronica replied as she pressed egg-battered bread into the skillet with a spatula. "But because an officer is involved, he could serve up to a year."

I put my face in my hands as I imagined Bradley back behind bars.
How would he hold up? How would I hold up? And what if he were cellmates with a spitter or a skin slougher? Or worse?

"How was he supposed to know Sullivan was a detective when he was in plain clothes?" Glenda rose from her rattan chair. "And while we're on the subject, get me out of this bondage suit."

I untied the aprons and immediately understood why the nonne had covered her. She was wearing a red spaghetti strap dress that was all straps and no dress.

"Bradley knew who Sullivan was." I picked up my fork and stabbed my
pain perdu
. "The good detective came to my house the other night to collect some evidence—and drop off my bra."

Glenda gave me a shame-on-you smirk. "You little wildcat, you."

I was so mad that I could've mauled her. "I forgot it at the club when you were fitting me for my costume, which, incidentally, is what started this whole nightmare."

"Looks like you've forgotten your bra again," Veronica said with a pointed look at my pajama top.

"That's not fair. I just escaped from the nonne nuthouse." I stopped and shot Glenda a sideways glare. "And our seasoned stripper here forgot to tell me about pastie remover. So, like me, my boobs need a break."

Glenda, who'd also forgone food in favor of false eyelashes, opened a tube of adhesive.

I scooted my chair—and my pair—away from her. "Veronica, Bradley doesn't think I cheated on him, does he?"

She plated her
pain perdu
. "Of course not. But he does think Detective Sullivan is interested in you."

I breathed a sigh of relief—and two lungsful of eyelash glue.

"And, between us," she added as she took her place at the table, "he doesn't regret hitting him."

"
Roar
, sugar," Glenda said, elbowing me in the side. "Bradley's a tiger, just like you."

"Would you quit with the cat references?" I snapped.

She hissed and made a paw-swipe gesture.

I rolled my eyes and turned to Veronica. "Did you explain to him that Sullivan and I have a mutually antagonistic relationship?"

"I tried." She stirred Sweet'N Low into her coffee cup. "But he's convinced otherwise."

I dropped my fork and stood up. "Well, I'm going to go set him straight."
And maybe break up with him
, I thought. But I didn't say it. I wasn't ready to commit to the idea yet, much less communicate it.

"You'll do no such thing." Veronica narrowed her eyes. "Sit."

I stared at her, shocked, and did as I was told.

"As his attorney," she began, spreading a napkin in her lap, "I've advised him to lay low until after the bank board meets on Monday, and that includes staying away from you."

"What?" I grabbed my fork like a weapon. "Who are you, Jeff Payne?"

"I don't think you're a liability to Bradley, if that's what you're suggesting." She poured syrup on her food. "But for the time being, the only things he needs to worry about are staying out of jail and saving his job. Fortunately, the charge is just a misdemeanor, and the incident happened outside of work. But he can't afford to get into any more trouble."

"Oh. So you think I'm trouble, then." I shoved a forkful of dry French toast into my mouth to keep from saying something I'd regret.

She put the syrup down. "I think that right now you'd be a distraction."

"She's right about that, Miss Franki," Glenda said, gluing a red, spiked lash to her eyelid.

I swallowed so that I could snort. "Theodora told me I was cursed, and she was right. My boyfriend's going to jail, my family's ruining my life, and despite the fact that I gave up sweets for Lent, my teeth are falling out."

"Curses are nonsense," Veronica said as she cut her breakfast into bites.

"Are you sure about that?" I asked. And I was serious. "Look at Amber and Curaçao. There's a curse on people who hunt for The Amber Room, they both stole a piece of it, and they're dead."

She leaned across the table. "Franki, I'm not going to argue with you about this. I just need for you to let Bradley and me sort out his situation while you and Glenda focus on solving the murders. Okay?"

I stayed silent. I wasn't ready to make any promises.

"This case is getting scary," Veronica said, waving her knife. "We've gone from a murder to a possible serial or spree killing. Meanwhile, you're being followed by a masked man, and this morning Glenda told me that Maybe spent the night because the killer might be after her too. The way I see it, you can't afford to concern yourself with Bradley's problems because we have serious issues of our own."

She was right. I had to keep my head in the crime game. More lives might depend on it—possibly even my own. "Don't worry, I know. And we are making progress on the case. Last night I learned that both Amber and Curaçao were into witchcraft, and that Amber probably wore the necklace to invoke protection from some mother goddess."

"You mean, Erzulie Freda." Veronica took a bite.

"Actually," I said, reaching for my coffee, "since she was doing witchcraft, I think it's some pagan earth goddess."

She shook her head. "According to the research I've been doing, Erzulie's the mother goddess. Even witches conjure her."

I flashed back to Drag Dolly telling me that Erzulie loved amaretto. "That makes sense. Amber could've been summoning her for protection with the help of the amber necklace."