Dead and Breakfast (The New Orleans Go Cup Chronicles Book 2) (5 page)

“It’s only me here now. Frank came to work here after the incident but no one has been in here except the police, me and…” her voice trailed off. Ernest and I didn’t make her say his name. I was afraid she would call him Guitarzan again.

“Oh, Julia, tell him about the phone calls before the guy checked in and after,” I said.

“Right. There was one call that was date and time stamped the same night Gervais checked in. He asked me out for drinks. That call came in while we were out. After that one, there were a couple of messages with only heavy breathing. All the other calls left messages or were about making reservations. There were no more weird calls after, after…” Julia drifted off.

“Who was the caller? Do you still have that? Did you give it to the police?” asked Ernest.

“It was a woman’s voice and she asked if Gervais St. Germain was a guest, waited for someone to pick up and then said she’d call back. It was like she didn’t know she was speaking to an answering machine. I think she left a number but I don’t remember where I put it,” Julia said. Then we all headed downstairs to the hall where my big deal with Dante happened. Frank was nowhere to be found. I thought he might have left for the day without advising of his departure.

We searched and there was no piece of paper with a number and the message machine had been erased. Ernest asked if Julia might remember the name. Julia said she didn’t leave a name only the number.

The detective gave us each his card and said if she did remember or thought of anything else, to call him.

As soon as he got into the BMW to drive away Julia said, “I’m screwed. Why didn’t I keep a copy of that number from the caller ID?”

“Why did you erase it?” I asked.

Chapter Six

I knocked once and opened the unlocked front door of my parents’ house. It seemed like I was walking into a burglary or a stick up. Everyone was screaming because our Italian neighbors were visiting. I was about to back out quietly so I wouldn’t be noticed when my dad spotted me.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in!” His rosy cheeks gave off the same hue as the red wine he was sloshing around in his glass. “C’mon in, we’re celebrating Little Angela getting married to Angelo Tuddo.” My dad loved any excuse to celebrate, since living with my mother, a teetotaler, paid his penance forward in life.

The Fortunatas, Angelo Tuddo and my family were all there. Little Tony, Little Angela’s twin brother was named after Big Tony, their Grandfather. Angela’s parents were Mr. Donnato and Miss Angela Fortunata. My dad grew up with Donnato at his house listening to Louis Prima’s music. Good New Orleans manners allow children to address adults they know or are familiar with as Mr. and Mrs. First Name. We use Mr. and Mrs. Last Name, even as adults, to address strangers or people older than us unless instructed otherwise and that still feels awkward.

Mr. Donnato would say, “Your dad was the only mick in a room full of us dagos right off the boat. He called my dad ‘mick’ so much a lot of people thought it was his name. Mr. Donnato called me Little Mickey when I went to their house to play after school. He said I looked more like my dad than my mother and I should have been named after him. I liked Mr. Donnato.

Little Tony grabbed me before I could out maneuver him, giving me an all too friendly kiss on the lips. He was squeezing my shoulders so tightly my ears could almost touch them. “Can you believe my hook-nose sister got some dago to marry her?” he yelled with my ear too close to his face. The entire family needed to practice volume control.

“Oh, my God, don’t talk stupid, Little To-o-o-ny. How many times I gotta tell you, she has the big nose but, thank God, it doesn’t have a hook in it.” Miss Angela stood up wringing her hands, and crossing herself every time she said ‘God’ which sounded like ‘Gawd’ while reprimanding Little Tony. She crossed herself a lot when talking because she said ‘God’ a lot. She had the same speech pattern as Little Angela. I looked at Little Angela, wondering if she had gone deaf and then I realized she was on her best behavior in front of her fiancé. She could very well hear everyone and take up for herself since we were all in the same room and she had given Little Tony a black eye or two when we were kids for a lot less.

“Hook nose,” he called Little Angela again after his mother sat back down. He continued talking to me, holding his hand on one side of his mouth as if this broadcast was meant for my ears only and the rest of the room was not tuned in. “Yeah, so anyway, Angela hooked a whale, in all senses of the word, to marry her soon to be knocked up ass.”

“Dat’s enough.” Mr. Donnato, Little Tony’s dad, put down his glass of wine and started to hoist his largeness off one of my mother’s dining room chairs screaming under his weight. Little Tony got the message, let me go, and scampered to stand behind his mother.

“You remember Little Angela, right Brandy?” my mother asked. How could I not remember her, or this circus scene I’d seen every time I went to play at her house after school. We went to the same grade school every day on the same school bus and sat next to each other every grade until we left to go to high school. Angela and her family lived around the corner from us, less than a one minute walk from door to door, and had relatives living on their block much like our relatives living around us on our block. Little Angela’s mother and my mother became friends when they were our Brownie Scout Troop leaders together and worked out the carpool schedule taking turns as our chauffeurs. My Dad never met anyone he didn’t like, with the exception of all the boys who came to our house calling on either my sister or me. When my mother liked someone enough to socialize with them, which was not often, Dad had no problem having a good time.

I could see Little Angela taking in a large breath to say something in her nasal whine. “Br-a-a-a-n-dy, I want you to be my bri-i-i-i-desma-a-a-id,” she said taking forever to drag out this request. I was already worn out from this five-minute visit so I knew I couldn’t listen to this for an entire wedding and they hadn’t even started all screaming at once.

Right after Mardi Gras I moved out of my parents’ home and into one side of a double shotgun I share with my roommate Suzanne and the Schnauzers I rescued in Mid City. My parents’ house is in the Irish Channel about a fifteen-minute drive from Julia’s guest house and my new apartment. I now had living expenses and quite frankly, I’d rather spend bridesmaid dress money on the dogs I rescue.

“As much as I would love to, Angela, I just moved out on my own and really don’t have much money to buy the dress, shoes, and all that’s required to be in a wedding party. How many bridesmaids are you having?” I started walking backwards toward the front door so I could make a fast exit before they could object. I wanted out of there before I got snagged by my mother into giving Little Angela a bridal shower. I’d rather poke myself in the eye with a pencil

“Little A-A-An-gelo has five brothers and ten re-e-e-ally close cousins so we are gonna have fifte-e-e-e-n gr-o-o-o-msmen and thr-e-e-e- ushers.” This took another two minutes off my life waiting for the total wedding party tally. There were going to be eighteen groomsmen, eighteen bridesmaids, both sets of parents, a couple of flower girls, a ring bearer, a maid of honor, and a matron (Angela’s married cousin, Sofia). So far, I counted forty-five in the immediate wedding party before dates, husbands, wives or spouses with children and they all had children. The rehearsal party was going to look like a state dinner. I wondered how many photographers had wide-angle lens to accommodate a bridal army of this magnitude. I couldn’t live through an entire wedding plan as Angela whined out every detail. I could always use the excuse I had to go home to walk the dogs if my visit spiraled much further into the dysfunctional realm of the usual family encounters. This conversation seemed like a one-way ticket headed there.

Angela was marrying a guy that weighed three hundred pounds and popped cannoli like breath mints. His head bubbled up from this great mass while his feet were stuck on short, massive legs that looked like they were holding up a ship in dry dock. His legs were perpetually on an angle under the great weight much like the Eiffel Tower’s legs holding up the wide part of the iconic structure. His movements required great effort to hoist himself up, and put one thundering leg in front of the other. Often this effort was only employed to reach another plate of cannoli. Little Angela had been dating Little Angelo Tuddo since we all were in high school. Unlike men only being a junior, she was also a junior in the Italian sense, both named for a parent. He weighed the same then as he does now and would probably gain rather than lose weight for their wedding. In high school, Angela’s twin brother started calling him Jabba the Hut, from Star Wars, because Angelo looked just like him. Little Tony said if Angela married him she would have little Jabba Hutt-ettes. Little Angela cried all through high school. What in the name of God could provoke anyone to date Jabba the Hut—let alone marry him? Big Angelo Tuddo, Little Angelo’s dad, had ten car dealerships from the metro New Orleans area to Houston and Little Angela saw no limits on the American Express card he promised her as a wedding gift.

“Brandy, you have to stand for Little Angela. You two have been friends since grade school.” My mother said, the recollection of my lifelong friendship with Angela returning. She gave me an eye-piercing stare over her half eyeglasses as if to exert mind control over my answer.

Every big, ugly, expensive bridesmaid dress flashed before my eyes. “I’ll have to get back to you, Angela and right now I have to run home and let the dogs out. They’ve been cooped up all day! I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know.” I had reached the front door walking backwards.

“Brandy, you know, you gotta dance with me at the big Tuddo-rama wedding Angela’s gonna have at The Veranda,” yelled Little Tony in my ear as he ran up and grabbed me by the arm forcing me to stay. I could just picture dancing with Little Tony, since I was five foot eight and he was five foot five. He would have to put his head on my shoulder.

Miss Angela was yelling at Mr. Donnato asking how six hundred guests were going to all fit into the room at The Veranda when their maximum was four hundred fifty people.

My dad poured himself and Mr. Donnato another glass of wine from a bottle of Chianti. Then he walked over to me where I was struggling to get out of Little Tony’s grip, raised his glass and announced, “Brandy’s mother and I will gladly cover the cost for our daughter to stand in my friend Donnato’s daughter’s wedding.”

Wait. What?

Little Tony added, “I guess that means you’re in. I’m the best man but we won’t be standing together, because you’re too tall and I gotta take care of Nana getting in and outta the pew so you’ll be standing with Angelo’s friend from the neighborhood, your old squeeze, Dante.”

Wait. What?

“Little Mickey, you’ll be Angela’s maid of honor,” Mr. Donnato said. Angela and her mom beamed at me. Thank God she didn’t say anything. My mother was smiling, something that didn’t happen often. “You gonna have a hundred boys wanna dance with you – a hundred Italian boys!”

This was moving way too fast. I had gone from graciously declining to now being the maid of honor?

Back slapping ensued among the men and hugging among the women. I was hugged into Miss Angela’s huge bosoms while Mr. Donnato hoisted himself to his feet and stood in place while everyone came to him to slap him on the back or hug. I stood in disbelief that now there was no way out of this mega wedding fiasco and Little Tony said I would be standing with Dante. It never occurred to me that Dante was friends with Angelo from school and might be at the wedding, let alone in the wedding party and I would be standing with him. This would make it interesting if I wanted to bring Jiff as my date. I left to go home, feed my dogs and tried not to imagine what fashion atrocity the bridesmaid dress had in store for me and seventeen of Little Angela’s closest friends. Instead I decided to look forward to my date with Jiff on the first day of Jazz Fest tomorrow.

Chapter Seven

The next morning, Little Italy’s wedding of the year was the last thing on my mind as I dressed for the day at Jazz Fest. It was a beautiful day with clear blue sky and already hot. It was sure to feel like one hundred degrees in the shade so I wore a cotton gauze off-the-shoulder sundress to avoid tan lines. I brought my wide rimmed straw hat and put on my hammered gold earrings and bracelets. I dolled up just enough to look good spending the day with Jiff but still dressed casual and cool so I didn’t melt in the African heat wave the Jazz Fest brought with it. I didn’t mind the heat. I minded when it rained out the Fest and it turned into a mud wrestlers dream date. I’d rather be hot than muddy. Today was a cloudless, sweltering day – just the way I liked it.

Jiff had the pricey VIP package, so we drove right onto the Fairgrounds, parked and breezed through the line that normally took thirty minutes to get through. I could get used to this preferred treatment. To meet two of his friends, Jiff and I made our way through the crowd to the flagpole, which was centrally located inside the racetrack. The problem was all twenty thousand people had the same meeting place. This was the predetermined meeting place for everyone who attended the Jazz Fest and planned to hook up inside. We picked a place and one of us would walk around and see if we could find our friends. We'd wait ten minutes and if they didn’t show we’d try again in two hours. This was our agreed-to plan. So far, they were a no show and it was no surprise. It was a record-breaking crowd for Friday, and Jimmy Buffet was the closing act this evening.

On top of the crowds, it was blistering hot. Jiff bought me water in a bottle so I could refill it and splash myself from time to time. We strolled around the fest grabbing a beer and treating ourselves to Crawfish Monica, my favorite fest food. We meandered over to stake out our special spot to catch Jimmy along the racetrack’s inside rail, about two hundred feet from the stage on a sloping incline of ground that gave us an advantage looking over the sea of people waiting for our favorite parrot head.

My other favorite, Irma Thomas, was about to start her performance so I could stand here for the remainder of the day and catch the two performers I came to see. Jiff and I had the same taste in local music and performers. We often went to the French Quarter to hear an artist or band we liked and would spent a large part of the night dancing.

“Wait here, I’m going to get another beer. You want anything?” he said into my ear over the music starting up.

“I’ll take another bottle of water if it’s at the beer booth. Don’t wait in two lines,” I said back to him in his ear. This put us in very close proximity to each other’s lips and his found mine, giving me a lingering see-you-in-a-few-minutes lip lock.

Jiff walked off in search of a short beer line and an even shorter bathroom line when my skin started to crawl and I felt the presence of Little Tony slithering up next to me.

“So that’s your new squeeze?” He spoke in rhythm with this wise-guys’ bouncing thing he had going on. Problem was Little Tony wanted everyone to think he was a wise guy but he wasn’t even clever, let alone, wise.

“Yes, he is. Now go away.”

“Too bad you’re with him today or we could, you know, hang out. Are you bringing him to the wedding?” He kept bouncing, unwrapping a stick of Wrigley’s gum, and then putting the pack in his pocket without offering me a piece.

“I haven’t decided. It depends on how ugly the bridesmaids’ dresses are and how bad I look in it,” I said without thinking. Luckily, Little Tony didn’t care how anyone looked in the dresses, only if he could get a bridesmaid out of one.

“You know, Angela’s gonna have two really, really good bands, and, uh, you know, we could dance up a storm, you and me, if you don’t bring a date.” He pimp-bounced out this easy to refuse offer in time with the gum chewing.

“Really, two bands?”

“Yeah, dat’s right. The first band is for everyone, you know, that blows off the church part and gets there early. Dat band is gonna play until the wedding party finishes with the photos upstairs, and band number two will start when Angela and my dad dance their father/daughter dance. Then, they play for the rest of the reception.”

“What two bands did they choose?” I asked, wanting him to keep talking so I didn’t have to say anything to him. I was thinking that none of the band members from Julia’s fiasco had yet to return calls to the investigator or Julia about their dead band member, last I’d heard.

“One of them is playing here today, the Levee Men, you know, they play up and down the Mississippi. You know, and…”

“The Levee Men—the don’t-hold-anything-back band?” I cut Little Tony off. This was the name of the band we were trying to find. “Do you know them or how to get in touch with them?” My skin was getting prickly at the thought that I could follow up with them and ask about Guitarzan’s habits and friends.

“Yeah, you know, I can hook you up.” His head was starting to look like one of those plastic bobble dogs. I had to stop looking at him. I didn’t want to get a headache in this heat.

“You can? When? Right now? Do it, right now. Call them on your cell so I can talk to someone right now.” My heart was racing at the thought of asking them some specific questions about Julia’s dilemma.

“You some kinda nutso fan? Why you gotta talk to them right now?”

“Just do it, please?” I smiled.

“So, you know, I do this for you, you gonna dance with me, right, at the wedding?

Jiff returned just as Little Tony was about to make the call. He had a big grin on his handsome face and was holding two VIP All-Access passes.

“I really want to go see The Levee Men if we can get to their tent,” I said to Jiff. “Never mind that call, we’ll just go over there,” I said to Little Tony and put my hand on his stopping him from making the call on his cell phone.

“I’ll see ya’ at the, you know, wedding.” Little Tony was yelling the bounce talk at my back.

“What wedding? When?” asked Jiff.

“My childhood friend, Angela, I went all through school with is getting married. The rest of her family is really very nice. That was her goofy brother and he makes my skin crawl.”

“Am I going to be, you know, your date.” He was making fun of Little Tony and bounced when he talked, bobbing his head up and down like a bobble head doll.

I was laughing when I said, “I don’t know. I’ll decide after I see what dress Angela picks out for us.” I put my arm through his and my head on his shoulder. He was tall, just the right height for me and he kissed the top of my head. “I’m not sure if I want you to see me in whatever dress I’ll be forced to wear.”

“You’ll be the prettiest girl there, no matter what you have to wear,” he said.

It was a record crowd and in this heat no one was moving fast so it took awhile to get across the inside field of the track to the very opposite end where the Levee Men were playing. Jiff flashed the all too wonderful ALL ACCESS VIP PASS and Security lifted the rope and allowed us to enter backstage. We were offered soft drinks, alcohol, beer, wine, and a variety of snacks. A sushi chef was on hand preparing trays, which were being scarfed up as fast as he could roll it out. Jiff got our drinks and then we were directed to sit in an area on the stage to the side of the performers.

This was heaven.

I took this time to inform Jiff why I really wanted to see and speak to these guys if time allowed. He was fine with it. We both knew of and liked their music and this way we could have a little howdy time before I started grilling them on the habits of their missing guitar player. After the band members came onstage, they tuned up a few minutes then came over to socialize with the fans in the VIP section. We introduced ourselves, telling them we were fans and enjoyed their music. The singer, who said his name was Maurice, looked at me and said, “Really, your name, your real name is Brandy Alexander? You’re not an entertainer, are you?”

I smiled and told him the brief story how my dad and his brother waited in a bar for me the night I was born and came up with the name they thought just seem fitting with the last name of Alexander for a New Orleans girl.

“It’s not even her favorite cocktail,” Jiff said laughing. “But, now it’s mine.” He put his arm around me and gave me one of his adoring looks.

I saw a guitar player taking extra time tuning up. “New guitar player?” I nodded toward the new guy.

“Yeah, we lost a good friend and band member right before this gig,” said the lead singer, Maurice. “We almost thought we’d have to cancel playing the Fest but this guy has played with us in the past so he knows our set.”

“Sorry to hear that,” answered Jiff for both of us and I realized this was a clue to give it some time before I pressed on. I wasn’t going to bring up being friends with Julia and where Guitarzan bought it until the band could see we were on their side. I’m sure the band, like the police, were convinced Julia was guilty and all that was left to do was schedule her lethal injection.

“Well, Miss Brandy Alexander, I’m going to dedicate our first love song we play today to you and this guy. Y’all look great together.” To Jiff he said, “That’s a hot babe you got there. In fact, come to our after party tonight. I’ll have our manager give you a couple of passes.” I gave him the same big smile I gave Little Tony. Sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. He waved at his manager, held up two fingers, pointed to us, then he walked over to rally the band to gear up for their set. Now we were invited to a party where I could talk to all of the band members and see who knew what.