Devil take me down, p.25
Devil Take Me Down, page 25
part #2 of Clementine Toledano Mystery Series
Frank stopped walking and moved them to a nearby bench overlooking the bayou. “How did you know?” he asked nervously.
“It’s not that well hidden. Like you said, I get home right about the time you’re leaving to go to work. She’s usually coming out of your place or you’re coming out of hers. What gives? She’s single. You’re single…” she started.
“That’s the thing. She’s not single. Not yet. Her husband and her are in the middle of this big lawsuit. Damn thing won’t settle. She can’t get a divorce until it does. In the meantime, the fucker is mean and jealous and it’s best if he doesn’t know anything. It’s awful, though.” Frank said, resting his arms on his bouncing knees, looking out over the water. “I love that woman so damn much and I can’t even take her out to nice dinner.”
“I’m sorry, Frank.”
They sat quietly, watching two little boys throw bread at four fat ducks and squealing in mock terror when the ducks chased after them.
“Listen Q, I know it’s not my business, but that ring on your finger tells me that Ben loves you. What’s happening right now, well, it’s a bad situation. But it’s a test, one that I think you’re going to fail if you keep on blaming Ben for it. Whatever’s happening with you and that friend of yours can be still be undone. Ben will forgive you. You’re in an impossible situation, he’ll understand,” he said, still looking at the water.
Q desperately wanted to bring him into her confidence. To trust him. To not be the person he thought she was. She thought for a minute before replying. She couldn’t tell Frank everything, but maybe he could shed some light on some other dark places.
“But he was still dating Strickland up until two days before she was killed,” she started.
“Strickland was the girlfriend just before you, right?” he asked. When she nodded in confirmation he said, “Well they broke up because the man wouldn’t shut up about you. Josh and me had a joke, we called it the ‘circle of Q’. Talk about the weather, ‘Hey Ben, looks like it’s going to rain’ and he’d say ‘Yep, do you know that girl, the one that fronts QT and the Beasts doesn’t drive? She’s going to catch pneumonia on a day like this.’” Frank laughed. “The man was obsessed. He may have been dating her, but his mind was on you.”
“There is other stuff, Frank,” she said. “Bad stuff.”
“Like what?” he asked, leaning back and stretching his legs out in front of him.
“They found Angela’s necklace under Beth’s body and there was a video on Ben’s phone of Beth moaning ‘fuck me, bossman’ while being fucked by said bossman,” Q’s voice broke unintentionally.
“No way he's the bossman in that video,” Frank said. “I bet you anything Beth was freaked out when you came on the scene. She could have put that on his phone just to make you jealous. He lock his phone?”
“No,” she admitted. While she knew exactly how that video got on Ben’s phone, there was a small part of her that wondered whether or not Ben was the bossman in the video. Hearing Frank discount the video out of hand helped to squelch that nagging doubt.
“And then there’s Tracey Aucoin…” she began.
“Wait, Tracey Aucoin, the wedding caterer?” he asked.
“Don’t you watch the news? Yes, Tracey Aucoin the caterer,” she said in mild annoyance.
“Tracey was one of my clients. She wanted to tone up for some man, kept worrying about the size of her thighs because of all the pastries she had to make. But she never dated Ben. She dated Ethan,” he said, nonplussed. “She was there that night at the bar, that night Ben threw us all out. She kept falling all over Ethan every time Ben walked by, like she was trying to make him jealous or something. She’d had way too much to drink. So, Nadine or maybe Josh, I can’t remember which, well they call her on it and tell her if Ben was the man she was after, that ship was sailed and she shouldn’t be using Ethan like that. It pissed her off and she just up and storms out. After Ben threw the rest of us out, Ethan said he was going to make her sweat it for a night before he made up with her. Said it wasn’t serious anyway and that if she was just using him, it was fine by him.”
Q stood up and faced Frank. “Are you sure? Did the police question you when she was killed?”
“No, I read about it in the paper, but she'd stopped being my client a few weeks before that. Said she couldn’t afford me anymore,” he said, with a shrug. “Frankly, I believed her. She was always late with her payments.”
“Who else?” she exclaimed. “Who else did Ethan date?”
“I don’t know. What is up with you?” he asked, pulling back in bewilderment.
“You have to come with me. Right now,” she said, pulling him to his feet and back onto the walkway. “We need to get to the Cove and find Josh.”
“Wait,” she said, stopping him. “Lift up your shirt.”
“Why?” he asked confused.
She pulled up the fabric herself, revealing a very toned, very hairy, and very tattoo-less abdomen. “Just checking.”
On their way to the parking lot on Magazine, she called Sanger and left him a message, telling him to meet her at the Cove. As Frank steered them into the early afternoon traffic, she made the executive decision to bring him into the fold and tell him everything.
Frank’s initial response had been, “So you thought I was a serial killer?”
“Yes…no…maybe so. It doesn’t matter, what matters is that you and Josh have known Ethan as long as Ben, but unlike Ben, y’all gossip like a couple of teenaged girls,” she said pointedly.
“That is not true, Josh is the gossip, not me,” Frank argued, turning onto Napoleon to head towards the Cove.
“Really? Then why was Josh at O.P.P. telling Ben about Sanger less than four hours after you dropped off beignets at my house?” she asked.
“Fair point,” he conceded, pulling into the parking lot at Lafitte’s Cove.
“So you notice things. Things that Ben doesn’t. Like who’s sleeping with whom,” she finished.
The front door was open and zydeco blared from the inside of the building. They entered the dim room to find Josh and Nadine pulling everything out from behind the bar. Q walked over to the mixer and lowered the level of the music.
Josh looked up from the bottle he was polishing and said, “Well, if it isn’t the town whore. You get tired of your private dick and come looking for something new?”
Nadine put her hand on his shoulder and said, “Come on, man, take it easy.”
“I am taking it easy,” he snarled, pushing her hand off his shoulder before he walked around the bar towards Q. “You thought you could just get away with fucking another man in Ben’s bed while he’s rotting in jail. Well, let me tell you something, you fucking lying whore, you mess with the bull and you’re going to get the horns; and I’m the fucking horns,” he bellowed inches from her face.
Without thinking, Q backhanded him hard across the face and pointed her finger up at him, yelling, “You call me a whore one more time, Josh Mason. I triple dog dare you.”
Josh held his face and looked at her in horror. Rage and surprise stunning him into silence.
“Sit down,” Q ordered. Josh complied, glaring at her.
Q took a quieting breath. The room was eerily still below the steady rhythmic pulsing of the giddy accordion playing over the P.A. system. Q finally walked over and muted the channel.
“Who else is here?” she asked Nadine.
“No one, just us,” Nadine said looking from Q to Josh with apprehension.
“Good,” she replied, not knowing what to do next. Fury roiled beneath the surface of her skin and she could no longer contain it. All the hurt, all the confusion, all the anxiety she’d been feeling the last month had exploded the instant Josh had hurled accusations her way and she was struggling to recontain it.
Frank sat down next to Josh. “Maybe you should tell the man what’s going on, Q,” he said, softly, looking up at her.
“Maybe he shouldn’t come raging at me, calling me names,” she fired back, still shaking with indignation.
“Lift up your shirt,” she demanded. Josh looked at her bewildered, but before he could argue, Frank reached over and pulled it up for him. A round-faced Polynesian demon surrounded his belly button, covering most of his lower abdomen.
“He’s clean,” Frank confirmed.
She pulled out her phone and opened the picture she’d taken of the chalkboard at her grandmother’s house. She handed it to Josh. “Did Ethan date any of the women on this list? Work with them? Flirt with them? Sleep with them? Anything.”
Josh handed it back to her without looking. “How the hell should I know? I’m not going to help you stalk your next boyfriend. Go ask Ethan.”
She sat down at the adjacent table and fought back the nearly irresistible yearning to curl up into a tight ball and cry in futile frustration for the next three hours.
“Josh,” she said, her voice shaky. “I didn’t cheat on Ben, alright? Sanger isn’t sharing my bed. He’s protecting me.”
“Protecting you from what?” he glowered.
“Ethan,” she said simply. “We think Ethan murdered those women and more and set Ben up to take the fall. Sanger thinks he’s going to come after me next.”
Josh looked at her and thought for several long minutes. “I think you’re going to have to start from the beginning, bro.”
That’s exactly what she did, beginning with the story her godfather told her over char-oysters. She had just finished explaining how Sanger was suspended and what they’d figured out the first afternoon at her grandmother’s house when Sanger walked through the door.
He looked around the room and said, “Clementine, what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Frank remembered something,” she said eagerly. “Ethan dated Tracey Aucoin. He saw them together. That night. Here at the Cove, you know the one with the thing on the thing?” She used her head to indicate the pool table at her left. “Isn’t that great?”
Sanger looked around at the three extra pairs of attentive eyes and ears and said slowly, “Yes, but doesn’t that also mean that someone else could have been here as well?”
Q threw up her hands in frustration. “Oh for fuck’s sake. We’re not getting anywhere on our own! Ben’s stuck in jail. The grand jury is next week. We’re running out of time. Ethan is going to get suspicious. Frank and Josh didn’t kill anyone. Neither of them has an angel tattooed on their chest and Josh just about tore my head off ten minutes ago because he thinks I’m cheating on Ben with you.”
Josh stood up and jerked his thumb in Sanger’s direction. “That’s the motherfucker you’re boning?”
“No, moron, that’s the very nice police detective who lost his job trying to get Ben out jail. Pay attention,” Q complained, hitting the table twice in exasperation. “I swear, you’re all driving me crazy. Ben figured this out after four scotches, for fuck’s sake. It’s not that difficult.”
Nadine appeared from behind the bar, nodding her head in agreement. She handed Q a glass of whiskey before climbing up onto a nearby table. “Alright, sausage fest, here’s the deal: Twelve women are dead. Some of them dated Ben. Some of them wanted to date Ben. All of them have been murdered by someone Ben probably knows. That means you, Josh. That means you, too, Frank. And Joe, Ethan, too. Yes?” she asked looking a Q for confirmation.
Q nodded and sipped her whiskey.
“Not sure why, but Q and the hot detective think that Ethan is the psychopath in the posse and not you two morons. I’m guessing because you’re both idiots and neither of you has an angel tattoo. And they need our help to see if Ethan knew any of the dead women. Yes?” Nadine asked Sanger.
“That’s about it,” he said, folding his arms.
Nadine hopped down from the table and snapped her fingers at Q. “Hand me the phone. Let’s do this.”
“Don’t you even want to know why we think Ethan did it?” she asked.
Nadine shook her head. “No, I do not. If the two of you have been working on this for over a month and that’s the best you came up with, then that’s what we've got and I’m not arguing. There’s no way Ben killed anyone, so maybe Ethan did. Joe and Josh are too fucking dumb to have gotten away with one murder, let alone twelve and frame Ben. And Frank over there cries whenever Bambi’s fucking mother dies, so he’s out. That leaves Ethan. Fine by me.”
She turned to Josh and Frank. “Any objections?”
They both shook their head mutely.
Sanger looked at Q. “Should have asked her from the get go.”
For the rest of the afternoon, Josh, Nadine, and Frank went through each name on the list, deliberating as to whether or not Ethan knew them. Q and Sanger finished cleaning behind the bar so that the rest of the Cove crew could focus their attention on the task at hand. At the end of three hours of vigorous debate, they didn’t have much, but it was enough to force an opening. Q and Sanger reviewed the stack of scribbled-on bar napkins:
Kenner Labarre: Came in with Grace a lot. Definitely left with Ethan once when Georgia was playing the Sugar bowl.
A quick Google search confirmed it was December 2007.
Heather Vidrine: Regular after she caught her husband cheating on her. Ben asked Ethan to take her home one night after she’d had way too much and started getting crazy the night the Saints lost to the Seahawks.
Another Google search showed January 8, 2011.
Strickland Aster: Josh saw her with Ethan at Voodoo fest at the Coheed and Cambria show but didn't see anything else.
Late October 2012.
Tracey Aucoin: Definitely Ethan’s girl in January 2014.
“It’s not enough,” Sanger said as he reviewed the stack of napkins.
“What do you mean, ‘it’s not enough,’” Frank complained.
Q tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice, saying, “They have DNA evidence putting Ben at all three scenes. A few drunk friends remembering a sloppy kiss or two with Tracey Aucoin or Ethan being with Strickland at a concert isn’t going to override finding Ben’s semen on or near two dead bodies.”
“Please stop talking about Ben’s semen,” Josh said, looking queasy.
“The point is that they have concrete evidence putting Ben at the scene. There’s not a jury in the world that would decide he was innocent.” Q banged her head against the wall in frustration.
“I know I’m going to regret asking this, but the beer bottle, he could have stolen from here. We know how his…DNA…got at Strickland’s house…we know right?” Josh asked Q.
She nodded.
“Good. And for the record, Q, I didn't know, nobody did, until this whole mess came up."
Q smiled in gratitude.
Josh quickly continued, "So that all at least makes sense, but how could that have gotten on Tracey's face? I mean, that was the night that he drove out to see you in Hammond. He’d been keyed up for days over it. There’s not enough alcohol in Orleans Parish for him to go looking for some strange that weekend,” he said, dumbfounded.
Q looked at Sanger and then confessed, “We think Ethan got it here, in the garbage.”
Josh grimaced. “Goddamn. How many times have you and Ben fucked inside this place? This is a business, not a fucking brothel."
"Technically a brothel is a business, Josh," Nadine quipped.
He glowered at her while Q explained about the night Ben threw them all out, glossing over the events that happened once she and Ben were alone. “But Ethan would have had to get back into the club. He would have needed your keys or Ben’s.”
Josh scratched his head. “Fuck, I don’t know. I was wasted and really trying to convince this girl to come home with me.”
“Ethan wanted back in. He needed some papers from Ben,” Frank suggested.
“Yeah, maybe I did give him my keys, but I’m almost positive I found them on my apartment floor the next day,” he said. “We were all drunk, it was over a year ago. How are we going to prove any of this?”
Q sat silent. Her watched vibrated, alerting her that she needed to be at dress rehearsal for the Nine Circles in thirty minutes. “We don’t,” she said. “We make educated guesses until Ethan gets nervous enough to do something stupid.”
Frank asked, “Like what?”
“Like killing me.”
~~~
Sanger was silent for several minutes after they left the Cove to head towards the Warehouse District and her rehearsal.
“That was risky,” he said. “What you did back there.”
“You weren’t there,” she argued. “The way Frank was talking... there was no way it could have been him.”
“What if you’re wrong and we just tipped our hand?” he asked.
“Then Josh or Frank kills me and you spend the rest of your life proving it and exonerating Ben,” she said, matter-of-factly.
Sanger looked at her in disbelief.
“It’s a joke, Aaron. Relax. I’m the one that has to get cozy with a serial killer.”
“This isn’t a game, Clementine,” he replied.
“Well good, because I’m not having a lick of fun.” She folded her arms and stared out the window.
After several silent blocks, she said, “Let’s face it, Aaron. We don’t have much choice. Ethan went to make his move that night and we shut it down. He won’t play, unless he thinks I’m going to be with him.”
Sanger jerked the truck over to the curb and parked. “No. Absolutely not.”
“I don’t think he’ll kill me…” she started to argue.
“That’s not what I’m worried about. These women and this guy were into some shit. Some shit that I don’t think you want to get near…He could hurt you,” he said emphatically.
“Rape me, you mean,” she stated it plainly so that there would be no misunderstanding. As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted it. Hurt and anger started a cage fight inside her chest for dominance.
And it finally happened. The thing she’d been barely containing, just beneath her skin, finally took a hold and a single thought overtook her mind:
Twelve years to the day. Twelve years to the fucking day.
Her shoulders began to shake with wrath and grief. She got out of the truck just before she began screaming in rage. She stalked the empty parking lot in front of the abandoned building Sanger had parked next to, screaming incoherently and as loud as she could, railing against god and the rest of the universe, shrieking, “Fuck!” at regular intervals and kicking the chain link fence around the building.
