Red Beans and Vice (16 page)

H
eaven put down the phone. “My new best friend at Enterprise Rental says he’ll pick me up in an hour. He said the last car wasn’t completely totaled and they’d give me another chance. He just laughed and laughed. Only in New Orleans.”

Mary looked up from her cup of coffee and smiled weakly. “What a pair we are. My husband was murdered, practically right in front of my eyes. You, for some reason, are a running target for a vendetta that keeps getting you chased. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Heaven rubbed her neck. “Sore, that’s all. Mary, there isn’t just ‘some’ reason. There’s a reason. Just like there’s a reason that Truely was killed. We just have to figure it out. Have you heard anything from the police?”

“The detectives came and questioned me last night. They said they were still interviewing the guests and I guess all of you chefs, too. But the bottom line so far is that out of four hundred bloody people plus all the waiters and the musicians, no one saw anything of value. No
one remembers Truely talking to anyone, walking away with anyone. He got up from sitting beside me to check out the explosion, said for the rest of us to stay there, and that was the last anyone saw of him. There was too much confusion.”

Heaven poured herself coffee. “I hate to sound cynical, but how can anyone, and I’m talking about Will now, think that the explosion wasn’t a diversion? Is there any doubt in your mind? I mean, if it weren’t for the explosion everyone would have been sitting in the courtyard having sorbet. Do you think someone would have just walked up to the table and stuck my Global in Truely? Hardly.”

“No, I don’t think that. But there could be other explanations. Maybe someone was following Truely, looking for the chance to take him out, or maybe someone at the party had a grudge against him. When the explosion occurred they saw an opportunity and took it.”

Heaven was alarmed. “Mary, did someone at that party have a grudge against Truely?”

Mary shook her head. “Not that I know of. I know what you say about the explosion makes sense. I’m just trying to find another solution that isn’t so premeditated.”

“Yes, I know what you mean. I don’t like the idea of someone following me around town jumping on me and trying to run my car off the road every other day. That all takes planning. I guess I thought the first attack had something to do with the nuns. But last night has me puzzled. The dinner for the Sisters of the Holy Trinity is over.”

“Heaven, will you help me do something?”

Heaven shuddered inwardly at the possibilities. “Yes, of course. But I’m more of an urn person myself. I don’t
know much about coffins and I assume as Truely was a Catholic a coffin will be involved.”

Mary ducked her head, rubbing her brow. “No, I’ve already done that. Yesterday evening, after you left. Will told me I should get it over with and he was right, of course. But it made this whole crazy thing too real.” Mary stopped and gulped, quiet for a moment. “No, Heaven, I’m asking about something else. I guess I’m the new owner of a coffee importing business. This whole thing with Leon is making me nervous. He’s being very…”

“Aggressive?” Heaven suggested.

“I need to see what’s up and I wondered if you’d go with me down there, for moral support. I really know very little about Truely’s business. And all Truely’s papers, the insurance policies and such, are in a safe at the office. I guess I could ask the office manager to send them over with someone, but I think it would be good to go there personally. They must be stunned too.”

Heaven was thrilled. She had been planning to figure out an excuse to go to the coffee warehouse. Now she wouldn’t have to; one had been handed to her. “I’ll be glad to do that with you. But I must have a biscuit and another cup of coffee first. Mary, how are you holding up?”

“I’m still numb. I can’t for the life of me figure this out. You saw Truely in action. Everyone loves him. Loved him.”

Heaven got up and patted her friend on the top of the head, stacking a biscuit and a slice of ham on top of her coffee cup. “I’m going up to get my clothes on. You do the same. Then we’ll go to Truely’s office. Your law firm is sending over dinner tonight and several of the actual lawyers are coming to pay their respects.”

“Where did you get that information?”

“From the maid, who gave me the rundown when she came up with my first cup of coffee. I guess after the way I looked when I came home last night she thought I needed a jump start.”

“Please tell me again what happened,” Mary insisted. “You were pretty vague last night.”

“I got turned around when I left the cousins and I headed the wrong direction and someone followed me and bumped the rear of my car and I drove down into a ditch and then they came over and knocked the back window out of the car and then they left. No big deal.”

Mary shook her head. “I can’t believe this. It’s a nightmare.”

Heaven headed for the door. “We’ll figure this all out. Don’t you worry,” she said, leaving her friend sitting there, her head in her hands.

As Heaven showered, she switched from thinking about Mary’s loss to thinking about saving her own skin. The truck had obviously followed her to the Vietnamese neighborhood. Then, when she left and turned the wrong way, maybe whoever it was thought she was out there doing something else. Or not. Maybe they could care less which way she drove; they were going to mess with her, east or west. Maybe they thought the stop at Hank’s cousins was just a ploy. What if the bad guys went to the cousins and tortured them or something? What if Hank’s aunt paid someone to kill the redheaded witch as a gift to her sister back in Kansas City? Heaven had to laugh at that one. She was getting a little paranoid. But she would feel totally responsible if anything happened to Hank’s relatives because of her. She’d call Hank later and talk the whole thing through with him.

W
hen Mary and Heaven got to the coffee warehouse, one of the secretaries was smoking a cigarette in the parking lot. She looked excited when she spotted Mary.

“Oh, Miz Whitten, you don’t know how glad I am to see you. You’ll never guess who showed up a few minutes ago and is in there trying to sweet-talk his way into Mr. Whitten’s office. Not that anyone would let him do such a thing. But he says Mr. Whitten promised to sell him the business. Will I still have a job, Miz Whitten?”

Mary stopped. “Who are you talking about? Who’s here?”

“I’m sorry, Miz Whitten. I thought you knew it was Mr. Leon Davis I was talking about.”

Mary tried to smile at the young woman. “I’ll take care of Mr. Davis. He’s got a lot of nerve, coming over here and upsetting you like this.”

Heaven marched in to do battle, Mary right behind her. She spotted a knot of workers over by the lunchroom, across the warehouse. Silently the two women joined the crowd.

Heaven took the lead. She walked up to Leon Davis and grabbed his arm roughly. She was sure she had the advantage of surprise. He didn’t know her from Adam, having just seen her once or twice when he had other things on his mind. She turned him toward her and poked his stomach with her hand. “Didn’t you hear a thing Mrs. Whitten said to you yesterday? Butt out.”

Leon Davis stepped back and fanned his arms at Heaven as if to ward off a pest. “I don’t know you,” he sniffed, spotting Mary over Heaven’s shoulder.

“Leon. I asked you yesterday to let me have my time to mourn my husband,” Mary said in a steely voice.

“I wasn’t bothering you,” he countered. He clearly never dreamed Mary would show up here today.

“I just had a feeling you weren’t going to respect my wishes, Leon, and sure enough, here you are, trying to get information that’s none of your business. If I were to decide to sell this business, after the way you’re acting, it sure wouldn’t be to you.”

Leon Davis flared at that. “I had an agreement with your husband. I’ll sue.”

“Get out, Leon, or I’ll call the police and have you arrested.” Mary folded her arms. The small group of workers stared at the intruder. Leon Davis started to say something, then thought better of it, turned, and walked across the warehouse and out the open doors.

Mary turned to the group. “Please don’t worry about what I said to Leon. As far as I’m concerned, this company isn’t for sale. Now I’m going to find my husband’s insurance policy. Heaven?”

“Take your time. I’m going to look around,” Heaven replied. “You were great.”

Mary smiled weakly and she and the group headed down the hall toward the offices.

Heaven tried to act casual. She moseyed around the warehouse looking for just the right target. It had to be a man, of course, and preferably someone who looked like he knew what he was doing. She wanted to get a feel for how the people who worked here were taking the death of their boss. If Heaven was right and Truely was killed because of some problem in his coffee importing business, then maybe the employees had noticed something.

A man was walking on top of the burlap sacks of
coffee beans, ten or twelve feet off the ground. He was tall, very dark-skinned and intent on his work. His arms rippled with muscles that didn’t come from the gym, but from hard physical work. Heaven couldn’t figure out what he was doing, though. He had a cone of metal in his hand and with the pointed end of the cone he was stabbing the sacks of beans. His back was turned to the room.

Heaven yelled up at him. “Hey, you, on top of the coffee sacks. What’s that you’re doing?”

The man swung around and looked at Heaven, not understanding the question at first. Civilians must not wander in here very often, Heaven thought as she watched the man processing the situation. “Who’re you?” he asked politely but without giving anything away.

“I’m Heaven Lee. I’m a friend of Mary and Truely’s. Mary is in the office now and I came down to keep her company.”

The man had been working all the time. He had slipped a plastic baggy out of his shirt pocket and was tilting the metal cone into the bag. Green coffee beans ran out in the bag and he locked the top of the baggy and slipped it in his other shirt pocket. “I remember you. You were here with Truely a month ago.”

“It’s the red hair. I can’t get away with anything,” Heaven said coyly, trying to loosen the man up a bit. “So what is that thing?”

“This is called a trier. You can ‘try’ the beans with it, see what’s what without opening the whole sack.” He jumped over onto a stack of bags that were marked ETHIOPIA. He pulled a sack from the middle of the pile; how, Heaven couldn’t imagine, as they were hundred-pound sacks at least. Upper-body strength. Then he stabbed the trier into the sack with a violence that gave
Heaven the creeps. She got a better look at the tool and saw that the metal cone wasn’t complete. There was a quarter inch of air where the two sides didn’t meet. She could see the coffee beans inside the tube. With smooth gestures, the man tipped the cone toward the wide end and the beans ran into a baggy. Heaven noticed him pull a marker out of his hip pocket and mark the baggy “Ethiopia/Ebanks/single estate.”

“The trier closes the bag back up too, so you don’t have a hole,” the man said.

“Then what will you do with those beans that you collected?” Heaven asked in her most interested voice. She was interested, of course.

“They test them. Water content and acidity and such. So when they get to the roasting, those that do the roasting will know how long and such.”

“Where do they do the roasting?” Heaven walked along on the ground, following the man above her.

“Out in Saint Bernard Parish. They got lots of folks workin’ out there.”

“How do you like working here in the warehouse?” Heaven was starting to sound like a junior investigative reporter.

The big man jumped down right in front of Heaven, giving her a start. She wasn’t used to someone invading her personal space from above. “It’s a job,” he said with some amount of scorn in his voice, like it was the dumbest question anyone had ever asked him.

“It’s too bad about Truely isn’t it?”

“Chickens always come to roost sometime,” the man said cryptically. “Truely was all right though, not like some of ’em.”

“Any ideas who killed him? Was he ever fighting with
anyone around here? I remember seeing a great big guy in Truely’s office. Who was that?”

The man just stared at her for a few seconds. Heaven could tell he thought she was an idiot. Then he shook his head. “I got to get these samples to be tested.”

As he started to walk away, Heaven called out, “I’m sorry. I didn’t ask you your name.”

The big man kept on walking.

H
eaven hung up the phone. She had just talked to Hank about her mishap coming home from his relatives. She’d spent ten minutes regaling him with how wonderful everyone was, except his aunt of course. Then she told him what had happened when she left and asked him if he thought she should warn the cousins. Hank was worried about her, but thought warning the cousins was unnecessary. “After all, I’ve been around for lots of your brushes with death. No one has ever bothered me,” he said matter-of-factly.

Heaven wasn’t sure Hank was right. It still creeped her out that whoever had run her off the road had been watching and waiting outside the cousins’ offices. But what would the bad guys do, go in to a doctor’s and ask what the redhead had been doing there? Search the place for something Heaven might have left there? As far as she knew, none of these threats were toward anything but her big mouth and her inquiring mind. No one thought she was holding the crown jewels. The problem started with her being in New Orleans. That was pissing someone off.