Amaretto Amber (Franki Amato Mysteries Book 3) (8 page)

I sighed. Compared to a conversation with Ruth, the strip club seemed like a spa. "Look, I spilled it on your desk because I tripped over Jeff when I found him eavesdropping at Bradley's office door."

"Well, well, well." She took a sonorous slurp. "And I found him alone in Bradley's office when I came back from my mammogram. The doc said my girls are doing fine, by the way."

My lips curled. I was up to my eyeballs in "girls" here at the club and on Bourbon Street, so I didn't need Ruth's old gals added to the mammary mix. "What was Jeff doing in Bradley's office?"

"He said he was looking for some loan contract, but we both know that was a load of bull pucky." She let out a boisterous belch. "So, I waited until he went home for the night, and then I broke into
his
office."

Panic gripped my chest. The last thing Bradley or I needed right now was Ruth getting arrested. "You didn't damage the door or anything, did you?"

"I want to keep my job, thank you." She popped the tab of some kind of can. "If you must know, I picked the lock. It's a skill I acquired in the Girl Scouts."

"For what?" I exclaimed. "The breaking-and-entering badge?"

"Let's just say that it was an inner-city troop and leave it at that."

As I processed her reply, something hit me in the head. I reached down to pick up the offending object—a set of Mardi Gras beads with a plastic penis pendant that said
Madame Moiselle's
.

"Sorry, Franki," Bit-O-Honey called from above.

I looked up to see her—and her bare breasts—leaning over the balcony as I rubbed the welt on my head. "Did you find anything interesting in Jeff's office?"

"You bet your patootie, I did," Ruth growled. "A receipt from Casamento's for two soft-shell crab loaves."

Casamento's was an old Italian restaurant on Magazine Street that looked like a giant swimming pool inside because of the original owner's penchant for imported tile. "So what? I just ate pan bread and oyster stew there a week ago."

"I'll tell you
what
." She chomped a piece of ice. "It's dated the day before Martin Slater, one of those two clients Bradley lost, canceled his account. And according to Bradley's client files, that's not only Slater's favorite restaurant, it's his favorite meal too."

My jaw tensed, and I squeezed the plastic penis. It looked bad—for Jeff—but I needed to be certain that he was turning clients against Bradley. "We need hard evidence." I caught a glimpse of my hand and promptly dropped the beads. "Like an email or letter."

"I'm on it," she said. "Now I've gotta scoot.
The Best of Divorce Court
is coming on."

I knew better than to stand between Ruth and her armchair justice, so I hung up without further ado.

As I stood on the street pondering the situation at Ponchartrain Bank, a guy wearing nothing but a mesh shirt rubbernecked my rack. I laid a lethal look on him and entered Madame Moiselle's. It was cleaner inside the club.

*   *   *

"Club's closed! Everyone out!"

I bolted up on my barstool at the sound of Carlos's voice. The t & a show had gotten so tiresome that I must've dozed off.

Carlos removed some dirty glasses from the bar. "Glenda asked me to tell you that she was going upstairs to change."

"Thanks," I said. Although I couldn't fathom why she had to change when the costumes she wore at the club were the same as her street clothes.

As he began loading the glasses into a dishwasher, I scanned the room and saw the last of the patrons stumbling out the exit. Now that the club was empty, I wanted to search for any evidence that might've been overlooked.

"Hey, Carlos," I began, sliding off my stool, "when Glenda comes down would you let her know that I'm taking a look around the club?"

"Sure thing," he replied as he wiped the counter where my head had been laying.

Hoping I hadn't left behind a pool of drool, I headed for the prop room behind the main stage to check out Lili St. Cyr's claw-foot tub. When I pushed open the door and switched on the light, I gasped. Many of the items were larger than life so that a dancer could fit inside. There was a martini glass, a birdcage, a fishbowl, and a high heel, just to name a few. It looked like a giant was having a garage sale.

After a minute or so of searching, I spotted the bathtub in a corner to my right beside a three-tiered cake. For a moment, I forgot about the tub and gazed with yearning at the colossal confection. It had been so long since I'd had sweets that I seriously considered taking a bite.

Shaking myself from my dessert daydream, I approached the tub. But my foot got caught on the birdcage stand, and I went flying. Using my hands to break my fall, I bumped into a six-foot-long oyster shell, and the top opened to reveal an enormous fake diamond.

"Some stripper doesn't know her gemology," I muttered as I rubbed my aching wrists.

Since I was already on the floor, I crawled around the tub and examined the exterior. The epoxy was smooth except for a few chips on the lip. Next, I leaned into the tub and noticed scratches down to the cast iron right above the overflow faceplate. Upon closer inspection, I realized that the marks were a crude carving of a mermaid followed by several
X
's, all of which had circles around them except for the last one. I wondered whether the designs were made by Lili St. Cyr or whether they'd been done more recently, possibly even by Amber.

The sound of shoes scraping on pavement startled me from my thoughts. I looked up figuring that I'd find Glenda.

Instead, a bald man stood over me who was so massive that I halfway expected him to shout "Fee-fi-fo-fum!" Only, it wasn't his size that spooked me—it was his eyes. The irises were ice blue, but the whites were as black as coal. And in that moment, they held the same sociopathic stare as Malcolm McDowell's character in
The Clockwork Orange
.

They say that your life flashes before you when you die, but all I could see was Bradley's worried face as he told me that strip clubs were dangerous.

Then everything went as black as the scleras of the giant's demonic eyes.

The pungent odor of hay assailed my nostrils, and something stabbed at the backs of my arms and legs. I tried to think—to remember where I was—but my mind was in a fog.
Am I back in Texas? In a barn?

I opened my eyes a crack and saw a flesh-colored mass hanging over me. It was coming in and out of focus, but it looked like…
an udder?

Okay. It was one thing to wake up in a barn, but it was quite another to be underneath a thousand-plus-pound cow.

Convinced that my eyes were playing tricks on me, I squinted at the mass. There were four teats all right, but two of them were covered with…
purple peace-sign pasties?

"She's coming to," a familiar female voice said.

"Don't let her sit up," another added. "Wait until the whiskey comes."

I snapped my eyes shut. This was no Texas barn, and that was no udder—it was Glenda and Bit-O-Honey leaning over either side of me in the prop room.

While I pretended to be passed out, I had to wonder whether those pasties comprised the outfit that Glenda had changed into and whether Bit-O-Honey went through life topless until she had to put on a costume to perform.

Warm flesh pressed against my leg, and my eyes, understandably, flew open. Glenda had planted her bare bottom beside me on my sickbed, which I now realized was a big bale of hay, and she was coming at me with a feminine hygiene product.

All of the sudden, I longed to be beneath that cow in that barn.

"What shook you, sugar?" she asked, dabbing at my forehead with a thong panty liner.

The giant's face came back to me in a flash. "There was a huge man in here, and the whites of his eyes were black—like a zombie's."

"Oh, that's Iris," Bit-O-Honey bubbled as her boobs bobbed above me. "You know, our bouncer?"

"Wait. Stop," I said, shooting a pointed look in the direction of her breasts. "Iris is a man?"

"It's a nickname," she explained. "Because his eyes are so blue?"

I massaged my forehead—for so many reasons. "And no one thought the black parts were worthy of a reference?"

"Those are corneal tattoos, Miss Franki." Glenda flipped her hair and, unintentionally, a breast. "And Iris is sensitive, so we try not to comment on his appearance."

I closed my eyes instead of rolling them because it took less energy. If you asked me, any man who tattooed his corneas needed to have a thick skin, both literally and figuratively. "So, I take it that this hay is for one of Saddle's acts?"

"No, it's for The Wrangler," Bit-O-Honey replied.

Now my eyes were rolling because I felt a VIP Room story coming on.

"He's another one of our regulars, Miss Franki," Glenda said as she tamped down the edge of a protruding peace sign. "He likes the girls to neigh like horses and stomp around in hay while he tries to lasso them."

I snorted. "That's not degrading, or anything."

"It depends on how you look at it." Glenda leaned back on her hands and kicked her legs like a Rockette before crossing them. "Here at Madame Moiselle's, we subscribe to a feminist view of stripping."

I stared at her and wondered whether my ears were as woozy as my brain. "And what would that be, specifically?"

"We're exploiting our exploiters tit for twat," Bit-O-Honey explained as she took a seat on the lip of a large stoneware pot labeled "Winnie the Pooh."

I suppressed a smirk. These strippers might know their feminist theory, but they needed some serious instruction when it came to common objects and expressions. "You mean, tit for
tat
."

"No, sugar," Glenda said, batting her purple eyelashes. "She means tit for twat."

Bit-O-Honey nodded. "Amber used to say that we shouldn't objectify ourselves," she began, balancing with splayed legs on the honey pot, "and that men should pay us reparations for exploiting us for so long."

I looked at the ceiling and chewed the inside of my lip. Free money seemed to be a recurring theme where Amber was concerned, but the feminist aspect was new. I wondered again whether she'd found someone to fund her.

"Here's that whiskey," a mousy male voice announced.

I turned my head and saw Iris holding one of Madame Moiselle's signature "cock-tail" glasses, and I bolted up on my bale despite his Mike Tysonesque tone. But when my eyes crossed and his merged into a Cyclops eye, I had to lie back down.

"Iris, you gave Miss Franki quite a fright," Glenda scolded as she took the glass from his hand. "You've got to quit sneaking up on people like that."

"Well, I didn't mean to," he whined, twisting the bottom of his faded Marilyn Manson concert T-shirt. "She didn't see me when I came into the room before because she was looking at Amber's pictures."

I bolted up again, but this time only to my elbows. "Do you mean those etchings in the claw-foot tub?"

He opened his eyes wide. "Yes, ma'am."

I cringed at the "ma'am" even more than at the black scleras. "I didn't realize you knew Amber."

"I don't. Uh, I didn't," he stammered, rubbing his shaved head. "Another dancer told me that Amber did those drawings. Maybe."

"Well, did she, or didn't she?" I asked, pulling myself into a sitting position.

"She did." He gave a lizard-like blink. "That is, Maybe."

"Wait." I held out a hand. "You mean,
Maybe
Maybe?"

Glenda looked from me to Iris and then shot my whiskey. "I'm starting to think that we need to take both of you to the damn hospital."

"I'm fine," I said looking with regret at the empty glass. "He's talking about a dancer named Maybe. And according to Eugene, she's the friend that Curaçao is staying with."

Bit-O-Honey blinked. "Are you talking about Maybe
Baby
?"

I almost said, "Maybe," but I caught myself in time. "I guess."

"Well, I know
her
," Glenda exclaimed. "She lives over in The Marigny by Carnie."

"That's good, because we need to pay her and Curaçao a visit." I started the process of standing up. "But first I need to go home and take a hot bath and get a few hours of sleep."

"I'm with you, sugar," Glenda said, rising to help me. "Right now, I'm too pooped to pole dance, much less private investigate."

As we entered the club, a member of the cleaning crew turned on what the dancers liked to call the "ugly lights," i.e., the overheads that showed all of one's physical imperfections.

Angling a glance at Glenda's pasties, I asked, "Um, do you need to go upstairs and get your shirt?"

"Shirt?" she repeated as though it were a foreign word. "Now that you mention it, Miss Franki, I did forget something. I'll be right back."

Glenda strutted toward the stairs, and I leaned against the stage for support. I was half asleep and still kind of shaken up, which meant that I was in no condition to drive home. Deciding to let Glenda do the honors, I pulled my keys from my bag and promptly dropped them. When I crouched to pick them up, I saw a flash of light reflect off something between the wall of the stage and the pile of the red carpet. After a few minutes of searching, I found the culprit—a tiny glass tube covered in some kind of oil.

Sitting on my knees, I inserted the tip of my car key into the opening of the tube and lifted it to my nose. It had an earthy odor. As I examined it for branding, I noticed silver stilettos with a stripper-on-a pole heel in front of me.

"What'd you find, Miss Franki?"

I looked up to see Glenda in a white, floor-length feather boa. It wasn't a shirt, but it was a start. "Is this container from a product the dancers use?"

She leaned over and sniffed the tube. "That smells like dirt, sugar. We professionals stick to the basic man magnets—baby oil, cocoa butter, or vanilla perfume."

"That's what I was hoping you'd say," I said as I wrapped the tube in a tissue and dropped it into a zippered compartment in my bag. Because I had an idea of what it was. It was a long shot, but if I was right, it was going to add a whole new dimension to this case.

*   *   *

My Mustang skidded into oncoming traffic, and then Glenda swerved back into our lane.

"I might've taken that turn a tad too fast," she said, taking a deep drag off her cigarette holder.

I pulled a few of her boa feathers from my mouth and began feeling my head for knots. Because surely I'd suffered a brain injury when I fainted at the club, and that's what had prompted me to ask her to drive. "Would you please slow down and get your foot back inside the car? You're supposed to use it, you know, to
brake
?"

Her head retracted into a flock of feathers. "Well, who ever heard of using two feet to drive?"

"Only everyone who went to driving school," I snapped as I checked my seatbelt. "Where'd you get your license, anyway?"

"License?" she scoffed as she pulled the car to a stop in front of our fourplex. "What would I do with one of those?"

That explained the reckless ride
. "Oh, I don't know. Abide by the law, use it for ID?"

"This is New Orleans, sugar." She exited the car and threw her boa around her neck. "Abiding by the law is a matter of personal choice, and everyone knows who I am."

She had me on both counts. I shook my head and climbed from the car, and I wondered why Glenda had parked on the street.

Then I glanced at the driveway, and the screechy-scary shower-scene music from
Psycho
pierced my brain like a blade.

"Glenda," I whispered, "please tell me that Veronica's boyfriend Dirk drives the exact same car as my mother."

She squinted and exhaled a cloud of smoke. "No self-respecting single man drives a station wagon, sugar."

I put my hand to my mouth. "I was afraid you'd say something like that."

We contemplated the maroon Ford Taurus in silence, and then I crossed myself because I didn't know what the hell else to do.

Glenda dropped her cigarette and stubbed it out with her shoe. "Family shouldn't stay under the same roof, Miss Franki. Do you want to sleep in my champagne glass?"

It was a tempting offer. I'd crashed in her glass once before after partying with some pirates, and it was a little cramped but not half bad. "Nah, I'd better go in and face the music," I said, thinking mainly of that
Psycho
soundtrack. "If my mother is here, then something's up."

"Whatever," she said with a shrug. "Just remember, my champagne glass is your champagne glass, sugar."

I watched with envy as she sashayed up the stairs, and then I slowly unlocked the door to my apartment and tiptoed inside. Even though I was thirty years old and had done nothing wrong, I felt like a teenager coming home past curfew—not that I ever did that, of course.

My mother was stretched out supine on the chaise lounge, snoring with her mouth wide open, and Napoleon was watching me warily from the bearskin rug. Clearly, my mother's unexpected visit had set him on edge too.

I turned and closed the door.

Napoleon growled like the traitorous terrier that he was, and my mother jerked awake. "Francesca Lucia Amato!"

A wave of guilt washed over me. There was something about hearing your mother say your full name that instantly elicited a sense of shame.

"Where have you been?" she scolded as she sat up in a nightgown that looked like it had come from the set of
The Golden Girls
. "It's—"

I waited while she slipped on her bifocals and looked at her watch.

"—six o'clock in the morning!"

"I was working," I said, clutching my bag against my chest as though I were hiding cigarettes or booze—not that I ever did that, either.

"All night?" she shrilled. "I thought that you wouldn't have to work the graveyard shift anymore after you quit the police force."

"I still work in crime, Mom," I said as I deposited my bag on the coffee table, "so I have to investigate whenever the need arises."

"Well I don't know how you're going to raise a family working these hours," she said as she adjusted the hairnet that protected her bouffant brown bob.

I almost replied that the only thing that was going to keep me from having a family was my family, but I held my tongue—between my clenched teeth. "How'd you get into the apartment, anyway?"

She slid her feet into dingy white slippers. "Veronica let us in."

My mouth formed a grim line. So, while I was busting my hump for Private Chicks, Veronica was probably busting a gut at the thought of me coming home to find my mom lying in wait like a lioness in my living room. "Why didn't you tell me you were coming?"

"We wanted to surprise you, Francesca," she said as she struggled to lift herself off the chaise lounge.

The
Psycho
screeching sounded again. "
We?
"

She pushed past me on her way to the kitchen. "Your nonna came with me, dear."