A.W. Hartoin - Mercy Watts 04 - Drop Dead Red (14 page)

Swish and Swat yawned, pointedly showing me their needle-sharp teeth as if I needed to be reminded. Then they stalked off down the hall and went up the servant staircase. I trotted past the stairs and heard the murmur of voices down in what Mom insisted on calling the parlor. It was the living room. I heard my name and hesitated at the door. If Mom found out that I told my best friend Ellen about the cream of chicken soup, I wanted to know before she disinherited me.
 

“You don’t know that he’ll be there,” said Dad. “She’s never seen him before.”
 

“Mercy’s never been there alone before,” said Mom. “He will be there.”

“It’ll be fine. Mercy’s no shrinking violet. She can handle herself.”
 

That sounded suspiciously like a compliment. I was shocked.
 

“I don’t know,” said Mom.
 

“It’s less expensive to stay at your parent’s. It’s no big deal.”
 

“It’s unnerving. I never told her.”
 

“No reason to tell her. What would you say anyway?”
 

I walked in. “Never told me what?”
 

My parents were standing in front of the blazing fireplace with whiskey sours in hand. Mom was in full Marilyn, but she always was. Mom couldn’t help it. She loved lipstick and lashes, pencil skirts and stilettos. Her look always matched her face.
 

“When did you get here?” Mom blurted out.

“A couple of minutes ago. Who were you talking about?” I asked.
 

“You shouldn’t eavesdrop. It isn’t polite.”
 

“I wasn’t eavesdropping.” Not much anyway.
 

Mom sipped her drink and eyed me coldly over the rim of her vintage glass. “Why do you have a broom?”

I looked down, surprised to see the broom still in my hand. “I was…sweeping.”
 

“Did you smack my cats?” asked Mom with a strange glint in her eye. When it came to the evil Siamese, she forgot who her flesh and blood was and who was purchased from a breeder in Chicago.
 

“Mom, I would never smack Swish and Swat.”
 

Mom put her glass on the mantel and crossed her arms. Dad sipped his whiskey sour and smiled so that his dimples danced on his cheeks. He towered over Mom at six four and was seriously lanky with red hair and a special charm that was somehow evident even when silent.
 

“Okay, so I need the key,” I said, anxious the leave the cats behind.
 

“That’s all you have to say for yourself,” said Mom.
 

“Um…yeah.”
 

“You didn’t even call me.”
 

“About what?”
 

“The stalker in the parking garage. I had to hear it from Morty,” she said.
 

“I thought Dad would tell you.”
 

Mom turned her glare on Dad and he quickly said, “You need keys.”
 

Dad tossed me the keys and ushered me out of the parlor while Mom chased us, yakking about the darn cats. The devils watched as we went by the servant stair. I swear, they were smiling.
 

“Carolina, she doesn’t have time. Six o’clock flight.” Dad took the broom out of my hand and tucked it away around a corner. “Hide the weaponry next time.”
 

Before I knew it, I was through the pantry and at the back door.
 

“Hey Dad, I want to know who you were talking about. What’s unnerving?”

Dad opened the door and pushed me through. “I want to know why your mother keeps making me salads when she knows I don’t like the color green. Life’s full of mysteries. Have a good flight.”
 

“But—”
 

He closed the door and locked it. My father locked me out. I had a key. But still it was weird. I was about to go back for another try, but I checked my phone first. “Oh crap!”
 

There wasn’t enough time for a fight. New Orleans and something unnerving awaited.

Chapter Ten

CLAIRE BOOKED ME on a non-stop flight to New Orleans and I was alone on it. I expected to see Aaron standing at check-in, eating a Twinkie and looking confused. But there was no Aaron at check-in or anywhere else. It was good to be on a flight alone with a magazine, but it felt a little weird. I kept expecting him to pop out of the bathroom, holding a giant salami or something. My row was empty, except for me, and the flight half-full. Once I got used to the idea of flying without constant chatter and the smell of hotdogs, I wadded up my coat and prepared to snooze for the two-hour flight. But it was not to be.
 

There was a mother and her two darling little red-headed girls in front of me. And when I say darling, I mean it. They were the most adorable children I’d ever seen, even the three-year-old who continually sang
Let It Go.
Not the whole song, just the one line. Their mother apologized and gave me M&M’s. I’ll put up with a lot for an endless supply of M&M’s. Plus, the small girls were the only children in two weeks that I’d seen that weren’t throwing up, concussed, or otherwise injured. It was refreshing.
 

My flight arrived on time and I was out in the humid air, grabbing a cab within twenty minutes of landing. My cab driver didn’t share my attitude and was visibly pissed that I wasn’t going to a hotel in the French Quarter. My grandparents were on a street he’d never heard of and didn’t believe existed. I told him to put the address into his GPS and silently calculated a lower tip for telling me that I didn’t know where my own grandparents lived.
 

We zoomed toward downtown, past a sign that made me smile. “Eat local. Breastfeed.” My cab driver didn’t find it, or me, amusing. He grumbled all the way to the Quarter and made sixteen turns before he found the street. I didn’t care. I was smiling. New Orleans always felt like another version of home. A grubbier version, but home none the less. I love the faded, but colorful, houses with their wrought iron balconies overloaded with fat ferns and flowers.
 

The cab jerked to a halt. It didn’t make the driver any happier that he was wrong about my grandparents’ address. He tossed my suitcase onto the sidewalk and his tip evaporated. When he realized it, he gave me a look like he knew I was a jerk all along. Not staying in a hotel. What kind of tourist was I anyway? He squealed his tires down the short street and ran up on a sidewalk, narrowly missing a couple of obviously drunken businessmen who were probably looking for Bourbon Street. They were going the wrong way and would end up at St. Louis Cemetery No.1.
 

I righted my suitcase and dug out the keys. There were two. One for the wrought iron gate, between two pink buildings butted right up to the sidewalk, and one for the door. I wrestled the old gate open and carried my suitcase into the narrow alley. It was unpainted brick with tiny ferns growing on the walls out of the mortar. Ferns don’t need dirt, I guess. I locked the gate and walked back to the courtyard. My grandparents’ place had been in the family forever and had an old-style courtyard between the main building and what used to be the servants’ quarters out back. The fountain was bubbling away, surrounded by potted palms and ferns, because you can never have enough ferns. The far wall had a little stream of water that spurted out of a plump cupid’s mouth into a pool in the raised flower bed below filled with twisting red bougainvillea. Nothing changed at Nana’s house. Mom said it was the same when she came to visit her grandparents when she was a kid.
 

I turned to the main house and unlocked the rather rickety door in the wall of windows that overlooked the courtyard. Nana and Pop Pop never closed the shades, even though their property was no longer private. When Pop Pop retired, my grandparents decided the place was too big for them alone and they started a vacation rental business. The servants’ quarters now had four vacation rentals in them and they did a brisk business. So the shades remained open to make them accessible.

That back room was Pop Pop’s TV room and it was filled with over-stuffed leather furniture, local artwork, and an enormous brick fireplace next to the equally enormous TV that usually had some sport on it. I carried my suitcase into Pop Pop’s room and stopped at the sofa to look at the framed family tree that hung behind it. There was something about seeing my name there among all those other names and generations that made me feel small and sort of precious. I was the last leaf on a very big tree. If I didn’t continue the family line, it was over and that tree would stay as it was forever. I said hello to the tree and went up the stairs to my room. It overlooked the courtyard, had toile wallpaper, and a flowery bedspread on the cushy bed. Never has a bed looked so inviting, but I needed some food. Lucky for me, Matassa Market was a block away. If I hurried, I could get to the deli before they shut it down. I unpacked the Mauser and, after thinking it over, I put it in the side table drawer. Dad wouldn’t be happy, but it didn’t feel right to go to neighborly Matassa with a gun, so I pocketed a key ring-sized pepper spray and headed out.
 

Matassa was located on a convenient corner, but didn’t see a load of tourists. It was the sort of place you’d never find in the Central West End. A full grocery store was stuffed into the space normally allotted to a barbershop. Matassa didn’t feel clean. It felt like family, messy friendly family. I said hello to a mildly interested clerk at the front and headed straight for the deli. The French Quarter was the one place were Marilyn Monroe look-alikes weren’t unusual. The French Quarter got all kinds and people usually thought I was a cabaret singer.
 

“Hello?” I said over the small glass deli case filled with sausages, cheeses, and several odd salads. There might’ve been gator in there.
 

A bald man stuck his head around a rack of chips. “Can I help you?”
 

“Can I still get a club sandwich?” I said, giving him the big eyes.
 

“Sorry. Deli’s closed.” His brow wrinkled. “Carolina?”
 

I grinned. “Mercy. I’m Carolina’s daughter.”
 

He threw up his hands. “Hey. Hey. Hey. You visiting your grandparents?”
 

“I’m just here for a few days.”
 

“I saw you on the CNN.” His brow furrowed. “You’re smaller in person. Tiny.”
 

“I’m not
that
small.”
 

He let out a belly laugh. “You look like an Amazon goddess walking up that beach in that bikini.”
 

“Trick photography.”
 

“I guess so. You want a club?”
 

“Do you mind?” I asked, trying not to look pathetic. Matassa made the best club sandwich in the world. I wasn’t sure why. It was just heaven on sandwich bread.
 

“Anything for Double Black Diamond’s new cover girl.” He grinned.
 

“You heard about that?”
 

“It was in
The Times-Picayune
. You want a cold drink with that?”
 

“No, thanks.”
 

I wandered around the store, while he fried my bacon, and marveled at the sheer amount of stuff they managed to get on the narrow aisles. I got a basket and picked out some Angelo Brocato ice cream, stracciatella, not the truly weird spumoni. The deli guy found me in the cereal aisle and gave me my sandwich, then ducked his head and asked for my autograph. That happened now that DBD named me as their cover girl, but I didn’t expect it in New Orleans.
 

“Really?” I asked.
 

“I collect autographs. Brad Pitt was in here last week.”
 

“How did that happen?”

“I think he was lost.”
 

“Doesn’t he live like three blocks away?”
 

He shrugged. “Tourists. So whaddaya say?”

I took a pad and pen out of his apron pocket and wrote a little note.
 

“Thanks, cher. Trix will take care of ya.”
 

I paid and walked back to the house. The street was nearly empty, but I could hear Bourbon St. a few blocks over. It was a whole different world over there. I put on my PJs and ate in bed. Actually, I fell asleep with half a sandwich in my mouth, waking only once during the night when I was suddenly awake and absolutely sure someone was in the room. There wasn’t. I went back to sleep to be awakened in the morning by the sun streaming through the windows.
 

I yawned, rolled over, and discovered I wasn’t alone. Sitting on my dresser was a black cat. It was tall and skinny with unblinking green eyes. Weird. My grandparents weren’t pet people. They liked Swish and Swat less than I did. Pop Pop called cats “Snobs that poop in your house.”
 

I slid out of bed and went into the kitchen. The cat followed me and sat in the kitchen doorway. I put the rest of my club in the fridge, hoping the cat hadn’t licked the mayo while I was unconscious.
 

“Do you live here?” I asked the cat.
 

It stared at me, still without blinking. Even the evil Siamese blinked. I got a bowl of cereal and ate at the counter while the cat watched. It was so weird. I had to call Mom, something I usually would’ve avoided while out of her sphere of influence.
 

“Hey, Mom,” I said.
 

“Don’t make a mess. Did you make a mess?”