Deaths of Jocasta (2 page)

Her cold, wet nose?

Hepplewhite meowed. She was sitting on my chest. Kitty paws on my tits I don’t find terribly erotic. I had been asleep and she was trying to wake me up to feed her. She meowed again. I picked her up and deposited her on the floor. I hate cats who assume that their stomachs have priority over my erotic fantasies. I sat up, shaking myself awake.

“Go catch a rat.” But as I said it, I was getting up and heading for the kitchen to get her some food. Hep has perfected a fingernails-on-chalkboard meow.

I dumped a can of cat food into her bowl, then stumbled toward the bathroom, her official feeding ground. Needless to say, there was a nearly full bowl of food already there.

The phone rang. I ignored my own reasons for going to the bathroom and went to answer it.

“Well, well,” said a familiar voice, “this is the third time you’ve actually picked up the phone yourself. I almost miss talking to your machine.”

“Call back and I’ll let you,” I replied.

“No, thanks. You’re the one I want.”

“Be still my beating heart. What can I do for you, besides the obvious?” I flirted. Joanne Ranson was my caller, a woman I’d been too drunk and scared to take as a lover when I’d had the chance a few years ago. Now she was involved with another woman.

“How’s your leg?” she asked, her tone serious.

“Getting better all the time. Soon I’ll have no excuse for not entering a marathon, except that I hate running. I went back to karate last week,” I replied. I had been wounded in the thigh. Joanne felt responsible since it was at her behest that I’d gotten involved to begin with. She was a detective sergeant with the NOPD.

“Good. I’m glad to hear it. Nothing official or even dangerous this time. Idle curiosity, really.”

“Yes?” I questioned. I wondered what Joanne had to ask me that she couldn’t get through her sources.

“An invitation. You have, no doubt, heard of the big bash going on this weekend.”

“Right,” I interjected.

“I got an invitation.”

“So? Most people worry when they don’t get one.”

“How did my name get on that list? Both Alex and Cordelia swear they had nothing to do with it. They’re the only women I know with those connections.”

Alex was Alexandra Sayers, Joanne’s lover. Cordelia James was…well, Cordelia was a long story.

“I’d like to know,” Joanne continued, “how my name came to Emma Auerbach’s notice. Can you nose around a little for me?”

“Sure. Are you going?”

“Alex didn’t give me much choice. Danny and Elly will also be there. I’ll save you a piece of cake.”

“No need.” I was enjoying this. “I’ll be there.”

“Oh?”

Trying to contain my smugness, I replied, “As a matter of fact, I put your name on the invitation list.”

“You?”

“Me.”

“You know Emma Auerbach?”

“Yep.”

“Explain,” Joanne said when I didn’t elaborate.

“Long story and I have to pee. See you there. Say hi to Alex for me.”

“I will.”

“By the way, how’s Cordelia? I haven’t seen her in a while,” I said, trying to be casual.

“I thought you had to pee,” Joanne countered.

“True,” I said, not wanting to appear too insistent. “See you in the country.”

“She seems all right. Very caught up in her work. See you,” Joanne answered, then hung up.

I went to the bathroom, finally, to pee.

I tried not to think about Cordelia. I had been trying not to think about her for the last few months. Ever since she had walked down my stairs and out of my life, saying she needed time to think. She had called once, leaving a message on my answering machine saying, “I’m sorry, I still don’t know. I can’t be less than honest with you, and I can’t give you a better answer than that. I hope you’re doing well.”

I answered my phone every time it rang, hoping it would be her. But it never was.

Get on with your life, Micky, I told myself as I always did whenever I thought about her. She’s way beyond your reach.

I roused myself, ran a comb through my wild curls, then headed for the grocery store to get enough cat food to satisfy Hepplewhite, at least for a few days.

Every year, on the last weekend in May, Emma Auerbach gives a huge party at her country place. Everybody who is anybody in gay New Orleans is there. Men and women are invited to the Saturday night festivities, but only women get invitations to stay the weekend.

I, however, wasn’t invited; I was working, although I strongly suspected that Emma had hired me to do security more as a favor to my bank account than out of any real need for protection. She insisted that I call her Emma, so I did, always feeling like a kid trying to wear her mother’s shoes when I said it. She was in her sixties now and would always be Miss Auerbach to me. I would do anything that she asked because, more than anyone, Emma Auerbach had saved my life. Not my life literally; perhaps I should say my soul.

I walked up the stairs carrying a heavily loaded bag of cat food. My office/apartment was on the third floor of a yet-to-be-gentrified building. Yet-to-be-made-livable some of us complained.

My so-called office was the large room in the center of my apartment. Off to the left was the kitchen and the bedroom. On the right, a darkroom, the closet, and the bathroom. Not the best arrangement, but it worked for me. In other words, I could afford it.

The door on the landing of the third floor said M. Knight, Private Investigator. I blew some dust off the M. as I locked the door. I was on my way to Emma’s.

The drive across Lake Pontchartrain is hard to describe. Boring might be a good place to start. Twenty-four miles of you, the lake, and a concrete bridge. My dismal Datsun huffed and puffed its way across. I could almost hear it chanting, “I think I can, I think I can.” Dry land was welcome. After forty-five minutes more of winding country roads I arrived at Emma’s place.

She owned close to two hundred acres. Most of the land was left to itself. Only a few acres had been cut and cleared for the house, an elegant and understated country mansion. It was white clapboard, two stories with ivy twining up all three chimneys. There were several smaller cottages in back for guests.

I parked my car behind the garage, then I went in search of Emma. Via the kitchen, of course. Rachel Parsons, a gourmet chef and Emma’s right-hand woman since probably before I was born, was taking one of a series of pecan pies out of the oven. I had spent many hours with Rachel in the kitchen, helping her and making myself useful, until I felt like I really did belong. And Rachel, with her patience and easy smile, became a refuge for the scared kid I was.

She didn’t seem much older than when I had first met her, thirteen years ago, only a few traces of gray in her black hair giving a clue to passing time. She was still strong, capable, her back straight and shoulders broad, as I had always known them. Her hair was straightened and pulled back into a practical bun. Few wrinkles lined her face, her perfect skin marred only by a faint scar under her left ear. “White boys didn’t see anything wrong with throwing stones at little black girls, like we were plastic ducks at a traveling circus,” she had told me late one night, when it was just the two of us in the kitchen. It was the only time she ever mentioned it.

“Made enough for the hired help, I hope,” I said as I took a big whiff of the just baked pie.

“Micky, child, do you get taller every time I see you or am I just shrinking?” Rachel exclaimed, putting down the pie and giving me a floury hug.

I squeezed her back. One of the things I always looked forward to was hanging out in the kitchen with Rachel. After Aunt Greta’s immaculate kitchen and her tired meals, it was a revelation to be welcomed into a kitchen where people laughed and you could make as big a mess as you liked as long as the food was good. Everyone, including Emma, would pitch in to clean up after one of Rachel’s extravaganzas.

“You’re the same size you always were, so I must be getting taller,” I answered her.

“There’s a pecan pie with your name on it. You’re getting too skinny.”

“I doubt that. But I’ll eat the pie, just in case. Where’s the lady of the house?”

“There’s only one lady in this house and she’s standing in front of you,” Rachel replied. “Emma is off in that direction. Just go straight and you’ll hear her presently.”

I followed Rachel’s directions until I did indeed hear Emma’s voice. She was on the front porch playing with her latest electronic toy, a wireless telephone. Or rather, in her polite but adamant way ensuring that the florist filled her order and made the high school prom make do with daisies, if need be. She finished the conversation, then got up and gave me a hug.

“Michele, dear, you’re looking well. And punctual as usual. What would you like?” she asked as we sat down.

Emma Auerbach has high cheekbones, a determined chin, and a pile of gray hair turning gloriously silver. She is equally at home in a library reading a scholarly text, in a bank discussing what she wants done with her money, or hosting a gracious party for a hundred guests. In short, she was a lot of things I admired and wished I could come closer to emulating than I was doing at present.

“The usual Scotch?” she continued, not noticing my hesitation.

“No. No, thanks,” I said. “I’ve been…drinking too much.” I hated to admit my mistakes to Emma. But I hated even more to lie to her. “I had to get some control over it. I had to…have to prove to myself that I can live my life without a shot glass beside me.”

“Better to learn that at thirty than at sixty. Or never,” was her only comment.

We discussed the details of the party, then the phone rang and she was off on another involved conversation. I excused myself to take a walk around the grounds.

The real responsibility of providing security at a party like this is to make sure that not too many guests fall into the swimming pond. And to make sure that nothing slithers out of the woods to take a refreshing dip with the inebriated guests.

I walked past the pond, glancing at my reflection on its glassy surface. There was a gazebo on the far side, its airy white sides twined with honeysuckle. I climbed up the stairs and perched on the rail to view the expanse of lawn—verdant grass dotted with explosions of colorful flowers, blue irises, pink camellias, some azaleas in full bloom, and still others I couldn’t name. The color was balanced by somber live oaks with ponderous charcoal trunks and low-hanging limbs fringed with gray Spanish moss. The lawn was bordered by the surrounding woods. The wind carried the smell of pine overlaid with the sweetness of honeysuckle and magnolia. Although the sun was bright, the temperature was still mild. It promised to be a perfect weekend.

I roused myself and headed back for the house. I needed to unpack. I was staying in my usual room, in the main house, next to Rachel’s and across from Emma’s. When I had first come here, Emma had put me there, saying she wanted to discourage any chicken hunting. I was eighteen then, still in high school, and didn’t quite get it, though the other women had glanced at me and laughed knowingly.

I spent the early part of the afternoon running errands for Emma and Rachel. Emma let me drive to town in her silver Mercedes. It’s amazing how much more polite storekeepers are when they see you drive up in a Mercedes than in a faded lime green Datsun.

Rosie, who was working with me, showed up in the afternoon along with some hand-picked college students (from the lesbian and gay organizations)—the rest of the hired help for the weekend.

The first guests began arriving in the late afternoon. After the requisite politeness, I wandered around the grounds, enjoying the colors of the setting sun and the first cool breeze of evening, the calm of twilight. The stars would shine tonight.

“Micky Knight! And I thought this affair had class,” a voice called to me from a newly arrived car.

“Danno,” I yelled back. “It did until you showed up.” I quickened my pace so that Danny and I wouldn’t be shouting across the lawn.

Danielle Clayton and I had both grown up in Bayou St. Jack’s, a small town out in bayou country, but we’d never met there. For reasons as simple as black and white. By the time the schools were integrated, I was living in Metairie with Aunt Greta and Uncle Claude. We met in college, two Southern children up in a harsh Northern city. We’d spent long nights drinking bourbon and wishing for warm weather. Danny had come back to go to Tulane Law School. She was now an assistant district attorney.

Her lover, Elly Harrison, was hauling a suitcase from the trunk when I reached them. “Hi, Micky,” she said. “It’s good to see you running around again.”

“Can’t keep a good woman down,” I bantered, giving Danny a perfect opening.

“Oh, yes you can. The longer the better,” she said with a suggestive movement of her eyebrow. Then she gave me a big bear hug and a friendly kiss.

After graduation Danny and I had lived together for a while, first as roommates, then lovers. But it hadn’t lasted. Danny wanted something serious and I wasn’t ready to settle down. She kept telling me that she loved me. Until I finally had to let slip that I was sleeping around to prove to her that she didn’t. Danny had no choice but to break it off. I was drinking too much to really care. Or notice how much commitment scared me.