All Saints' Secrets (Saints Mystery Series Book 2) Read online

  As the boat was pulling up to the island one of the tour guides told us they didn’t allow visitors in the statue anymore. He said we could get off and roam the grounds but the stairs to the statue had been closed off since 9/11. Throngs of people got off the boat, but we stayed on waiting for it to be clear so I could be wheeled down the ramp. While we were waiting I saw a large bald man with his back to us. He was wearing army green fatigue pants and a green shirt. He looked like Jason Stepwald and was dressed like him. I felt my heart rate quicken. I tried to get a good look at his hand but it was tucked in front of him. I was about to tell Abolina and Beau about the man when I finally saw him stretch out his arms, both complete with hands, and pick up a little girl. I was still shaken, but I didn’t want to admit it.

  “Can we just stay on the boat?” I suggested. “If we can’t go up in the statue it would be boring anyway.”

  Beau agreed. He gave Lady Liberty a once over and said, “It smaller than it look from the TV for damn sure.”

  He was telling the truth. She was more pedestal than statue. While we waited for the boat to re-fill with passengers we took pictures from the deck. We made sure to get silly tourist pictures like one of each of us holding our right hand up in the air, pretending to be holding a torch.

  When we were back on dry land we took a taxi to Times Square. I told the cabbie to take me to restaurant row, a few blocks from the square, because saying to drop you in Times Square is like saying, “I’m a tourist. Drive me all over the city and then get stuck in midtown traffic, and then drop me in Times Square.”

  I also knew that we would have to walk down Broadway to get to Times Square, and I wanted to scope out the theater before my audition. It was scheduled for the next day.

  Just a block off from Times was my theater, the Opal. I made sure we went slowly past it and took a note that it had a double door entrance with no steps so I would not have to worry about navigating stairs on top of dealing with my nerves in the morning.

  When we got to Times Square the lights and movement were a little overwhelming for Abolina. She stood there both amazed and annoyed. Beau was watching girls more than the lights. There were a lot of them, and they were dressed in a little less than he was used to. I remembered back when Josephine and I first came to the city and she had tried to acquaint me with city dressing. She said city dressing was tighter, shorter and redder than we were used to. Looking around today her instructions fit the bill.

  We took in all of the lights and movement, and after a short time Abolina said, “It’s too loud.”

  Then a knock-off cartoon character was trying to aggressively hand us flyers for smoothies. She had enough. We grabbed a bike basket car, and I asked him to take us to one last place, FAO Schwarz. It was my old job, where I used to play the floor keyboard.

  It was a tourist spot. People go to watch the piano girls dance the tunes from the movie “Big.” And kids go to get their pictures taken with the two store guards dressed like nutcrackers at the entrance. We walked past them into the open glass foyer of the store and took the escalator up to the second floor, where my old instrument stood. The keyboard was on open time so the girls who normally played were supervising little children as they tried to step their own versions of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on the keys.

  I recognized one of the girls supervising right away. Her name was Kristy, and I had played with her before. I inched my way over to her through the onlookers.

  When she saw me she said, “Oh my God, Fanchon.”

  She reached over, gave me a one-armed hug and took in the sight of my leg, “We heard about all that stuff with your roommate. Your leg. Oh my gosh. Is it bad?”

  I shrugged. “Well, my piano playing days are over as far as FAO is concerned.”

  “Oh, no. What are you going to do?”

  “Well,” I said. “I have an audition tomorrow at the Opal.”

  Kristy smiled. “Playing with your hands from now on, I bet.”

  Then I heard the dinging sound that announced to customers that the girls were about to play the piano again, and Kristy turned to say, “Hey Fanchon, if you need anything you can just call me. Okay?” She held her hand up to her head like a phone and mouthed “call me” to drive her point home. It was a nice gesture, but I hadn’t the slightest clue what her phone number was.

  I told Beau and Abolina that we had to get back so that they could dance their set. We stood back and watched them dance “Toccata and Fugue.” It was one of my favorites to dance play when it was my job. Beau looked unimpressed and said nothing about it, but Abolina loved it and clapped along with the rest of the crowd.

  After the song was over we were exhausted and all agreed to go back to the hotel for the night. I wanted to get one more round of piano playing in and to get to bed early so that I would be well rested for my audition. When we got back to the room I realized Beau had not said anything for a long time. And he was moving things around quickly and aggressively.

  “What’s wrong Beau?” I asked.

  Abolina stopped taking off her shoes and looked up at him too.

  “Nothing,” he said, taking his wallet out of his back pocket and throwing it to the wall.

  “Boy, what you mean nothing? You’re throwing a hissy fit,” Abolina said.

  I thought about when his mood changed and realized it was while we were at FAO, when I was talking to Kristy. It occurred to me that he was mad because somebody in the city offered to help me, and he wanted me to be stuck going back to the bayou. I thought he was mad because he thought I didn’t have any friends in the city, and now he knew otherwise. I called him out on it. “Are you mad because Kristy offered to help me and you want me to be stuck with you?”

  “What?” he said. “I don’t care about that shit. I’m pissed cause…”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “What?” I shouted.

  “Why did you say you moved to New York? Cause you and Josephine didn’t want to work for no tourists on the plantation? Who you think you workin’ for on your Broadway and in your toy store?”

  I said nothing.

  “You don’t have to live in New York to live this life, Fanchon. You can live it with your own people. Hell, at least live in New Orleans. This is like a whole other God damned planet up here.”

  “Don’t use the Lord’s name in that manner,” Abolina said, scolding him.

  “Sorry, but Abolina you know it’s true. This is the most unwelcome I ever felt in my life. The food’s bland. The people is bland, and you run into a hundred folks a day who don’t say one word to you. How can you stand it, Fanchon?”

  He was saying something I hadn’t admitted to myself. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to tell him, but I could hardly stand the hurt and the loneliness since Josephine had gone. Part of me wanted Beau and Abolina to make me go back, so I didn’t have to admit that New York didn’t work or that I was still afraid of Jason Stepwald. I didn’t say anything. Instead I put down my crutches and crawled into bed.

  Not long after I closed my eyes the girl in the water was back. This time I was closer to her. I could see then that she was not Lisette. Her features were still vague, but her head was intact. In some ways she looked like me, with the same dark hair and pale skin, but she was thinner, and I couldn’t make out the rest of her features well enough to decide who she looked like. This dream was different. The girl was floating peacefully in the water, and I saw her from below. Suddenly she opened her eyes at me. It startled me so much I leapt up in bed, jarring myself awake.

  The room was quiet. I could hear Beau gently snoring on the floor, and Abolina was next to me, sleeping on her side. It was dark, but I could see lights from the streets below illuminating the room. The clock on the nightstand said it was 5 a.m. and decided it was too late to go back to bed.

  Instead, I got up quietly and went down to the lobby. I asked the night guys at the desk if I could turn on the TV in the eating nook. They didn’t mind and told me they were about to star
t setting up for breakfast.

  I sat in the nook and turned the station to something I did not have to think too much about. An old sitcom fit my needs. I sat there with my eyes on the muted TV and lost myself in thought. I wondered about the girl in my dream. I thought about my family, and I thought about what I wanted for my future. Breakfast was in full swing when I finally pulled myself back to reality. Hotel guests were grabbing coffee and toast, while they chatted around me. Abolina and Beau came down in their nightclothes and breathed a sigh of relief when they found me in the breakfast nook.

  “Please leave me a note next time before you let out,” Abolina said. Then they both filled Styrofoam cups with coffee and took a seat by me.

  They helped me get ready that morning. Abolina helped me with the shower. Beau helped me dry my hair and was surprisingly good at it. He pulled my hair to one side with a pin and smoothed it with gel. He was very particular about taming my fly aways, which made me suppress a laugh. I made myself up for the first time since the incident. I put on make-up, dressed my hair in hairspray and put on a decent outfit. I had to wear a dress as getting pants over the contraption on my leg was nearly impossible.

  After a short taxi ride we were at the theater, and my nerves were getting to me. I listened to the first two players. They had both prepared amazing renditions of classical Mozart and Beethoven. They were so great I suddenly felt uneasy about my choice of a song as easy as “Hallelujah.”

  When they called my name, I shakily made my way to the stage, and because I was on crutches they probably didn’t notice my nerves.

  When I sat to play I concentrated on my left foot and tried to push the right one out of my mind. My fingers found their places and without looking at the music I felt my way through the song. It started beautifully, just as I planned. However, I did not plan for the sound that would emanate from the gentle tap of my right leg. With it in a cast, what was normally a light tapping sound was being carried around the room by acoustics. It created a barrage of tapping. As I made my way through the song the tapping seemed to get louder and louder. I wondered if in the seats they could hear it as much as I could. I was barely thinking about playing and before I knew it I was done. I blew it. I couldn’t concentrate and I blew it. I looked at the three people seated in the middle of the room, they were all scratching notes on their little pads, and Abolina and Beau were in the back corner giving me thumbs up.

  One of the women scribbling notes looked over her glasses and said, “That’s nice. Could you play something with a little more range?”

  The other two people next to her nodded their heads in agreement. I sat looking at the piano trying to decide what I would pull out. When the woman said, “Perhaps something more complicated like Flight of the Bumblebee?”

  “How bad was it?” I asked as we walked out of the theater.

  Abolina spoke first, “Well I don’t think it’s ever a good idea for a lady to swear, and especially not in a public place, but you have been under a lot of pressure and nobody is going to blame you for a little outburst.”

  Beau was laughing. “That audition was as FUBAR as your gimp leg.”

  Neither of us paid any attention to Beau’s comment. We made our way out to the main road and grabbed a taxi. Once we were settled in Abolina said, “It’s time to get serious about a plan now, sweetie. Beau and I have to go back, and we need to make sure you are settled in some sort of way. What do you want, Fanchon? You tell me what you want to do and I will support you either way.”

  I was looking out the window at mid-town New York, the skyscrapers I had never been inside and at the people I didn’t know and told her, “I’m going home.”

  Cleaning Day

  I had one last loose end to tie up before I could leave town. I had to clean out my old apartment, where Josephine was murdered. Banyan told me that the Police had taken out everything with blood splatter on it. The soiled bits of drywall would be gone along with carpeting, bedding and the ceiling. I knew from my insurance company that a cleaning crew was hired to clear out any leftover debris, as they called it. I had given the police the key to my apartment, so we called Banyan to meet us and let us in.

  Beau, Abolina and I waited in the hallway for him, along with my neighbor Jay. Jay was a nice young man who liked to wear women’s clothing. He had graciously agreed to help us with the cleanup.

  When Banyan finally arrived to let us in we had been waiting a long while. The apartment had a bad feel to it. I knew it had been cleaned, but I could still faintly smell something metallic, just like the blood from that night, though at the time I did not know that vast quantities of blood smelled like metal.

  I was glad to have friends with me. I didn’t have the strength to face the apartment alone. We walked down the hallway to the galley kitchen. The apartment had no dining room, but Josephine and I had put up a breakfast table with two barstools to eat in the kitchen. That part of the apartment was practically a hallway. It had no windows and a half-sized oven and fridge. The first door to the left was Josephine’s room, and mine was at the end of the hall. I did not have a door. The room I stayed in was meant to be the living room. It was the larger of the two rooms and had a closet meant for coats, which I used for clothes. We started in that room, leaving Jay in the kitchen to pack up all of the cooking gear. I gifted it to him, because I wasn’t willing to pay to ship it all home.

  The rest of us walked down to my bedroom, though I never felt like it was my room. I had only lived there a few months and had never made it up as my own. It had a basic Ikea bed, night table and dresser. No furniture worth keeping and no pictures on the walls. I told Jay to let the neighbors pick at it. I had only a few items I wanted, and since I never unpacked it was easy to grab the small amount of stuff I did want: clothes, my jewelry, my old clarinet and a small collection of decorative boxes.

  After we were packed, Banyan asked me what we were going to do about Josephine’s room. I told him I didn’t want to go in there. Her room had much more in it than mine. She had settled in. I told Abolina to have at it, but as far as I was concerned we could leave it all behind.

  She, Banyan and Beau went in, and I waited in the kitchen with Jay while he flipped through my old things.

  “Some of this stuff is nice,” he said picking up one of our heavy duty whisks from Williams-Sonoma.

  I helped him pack and emptied the rotted food out of the fridge into a garbage bag. After about an hour Abolina and Beau emerged from the room. Beau was carrying a large cardboard box, and Abolina had red-rimmed eyes.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “I just never realized,” she said and sucked in a little. “I never realized it was so bad.”

  I could see past her to the bedroom. There was a gigantic patch of carpeting ripped out of the floor and chunks of wall were gone. Josephine’s murder was grotesque and seeing the state of that room brought back memories I had been trying to suppress.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Beau said. I was in complete agreement and we all left.

  We took a mini-van taxi back to the hotel, and Banyan sat in the middle with me. When we arrived he pulled me aside and asked to talk to me privately. We sat in the darkened breakfast nook, and he said, “I wanted to let you know I sent in the exhumation order so they will be digging her up later this week.”

  I had to correct him. “We don’t bury our dead where I am from. The ground is too wet. If we bury our dead in the ground and the water table rises, they will come back to the surface. Lisette is not buried; she is in a concrete tomb in her family mausoleum.”

  “That explains a lot,” he said. “It takes us weeks to get an exhumation here, because we need to get a backhoe and a crew. They said they would run down and do it in a few days. I thought it was a little different, but you guys are a little different so I didn’t think much of it.”

  I rolled my eyes at him, and he laughed, poking me in the arm.

  “So, are you coming down to help with the invest
igation?” I asked.

  “I’m not involved in this, Fanchon. Aside from opening up the inquiry I have no role in Lisette’s case.”

  “Do you think you might come down to Louisiana though for any reason?” I asked looking down at the breakfast table. “Or is this the last time I see you?”

  He looked taken aback by the question. “Well, you still might get the piano job right? You might be back?”

  I laughed. “It’s pretty safe to say I didn’t get that job, Banyan.”

  “You can call me Bruce,” he reminded me. “And how do you know you didn’t get the job?”

  “Well, they suggested I play a song I detest and rather than play it I pulled out an improvised version of “When the Saints Go Marching In” and told them if they didn’t like it they could go to hell.”

  “Jesus,” he said shaking his head. “You never know, Fanchon. In New York people like people who act like that. We say they have moxie.”

  “I don’t think the room I was playing for was looking for moxie,” I told him.

  He said he was sorry. Then he reminded me that there would one day be a trial for Stepwald that I would have to testify for. So he was sure he would see me again for that.

  “So,” I said. “Until then, no?”

  He sat for a moment not meeting my eyes. “I don’t know, Fanchon. I heard that you have months of healing ahead of you and a lot of physical therapy for your leg. You concentrate on that.”

  “If you are ever in Louisiana, look me up.” I told him.

  “I would never miss a chance to look you up,” he said in a way that sounded dirty. I made a quizzical face at him. He looked me in the eye and said, “You heard me.”

  Back to the Bayou

  We flew back to Louisiana the next day. Beau had parked his red monster truck in the airport lot for over a week, and I picked up the hefty tab to get it out. We rode most of the way back to the bayou in silence. I had no idea what was on the mind of the other two, but I was trying to numb my brain to the fact that I was about to be firmly stuck in the bayou for at least six months. My life would be on hold until my leg mended, and I couldn’t stand it. Normally, when people move it’s for a fresh start, and there is excitement in the air, but this move was like taking a step back in my life, and I hated it. Though I couldn’t say exactly what it was I wished I were doing, I knew it wasn’t this.