Devil take me down, p.8
Devil Take Me Down, page 8
part #2 of Clementine Toledano Mystery Series
She rushed over to Q, quickly smoothing her brilliant white pantsuit on the way.
“Q, my dahlin’, l’shanah tovah!”
Q fell into her embrace and held on tightly. Her grandmother pulled back and immediately began to scold her.
“So I have to read in the papeh that you found another dead body? Neighbors are callin’. People here are worried. You couldn’t call me? You’re too busy or somethin’?” Constance Toledano was a lifelong resident of St. Charles Avenue, but her thick cosmopolitan accent made her sound like she was raised a little closer to Flatbush Avenue instead.
“I needed a couple of days, Bubbe. I was going to tell you tonight,” she tried to explain.
“A couple of days, psh. More like a whole week. But it’s wonderful that you came to Temple to tell me about a murder you found, not to spend the holiday with your Bubbe.”
Constance stopped as soon as she saw Q blinking away tears, realizing that her granddaughter really had needed a few days to process stumbling upon another murder. “Forget it, dahlin’. Let’s get you a drink. You want some challah? Mavis made your favorite, apples and raisins with extra nutmeg.”
She handed Q one of the glasses of wine on the table and took four efficient, confident strides to the next table and its silver platters covered in slices of braided bread. Constance's cook and best friend, Mavis Jackson, had helped raise Q, and was also the best Kosher cook in New Orleans, despite being a devoted member of the Franklin Avenue Baptist church and its remarkable choir. The sweet and fluffy braided bread she created every Rosh Hashanah was the reason that Q faithfully attended services every year. Bubbe held it in ransom, and welcoming in the new year with prayers, cuddled next to her grandmother, was a price Q was happily willing to pay.
Constance picked out two thick slices, dripping with honey. Bringing them back, she said, “Here, eat. You’re too thin, no wonder you’re upset.”
She handed them to Q, who took an eager bite. Constance looked up at Ben. “And you? You don’t have a hug for an old lady?”
Ben smiled and leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. Constance took the opportunity to clasp his face with both of her hands. “When are you gonna marry my granddaughter and stop this house playin'?”
He winked at her and replied, “I was thinking this spring. Would that work for you?”
Constance’s eyes widened. She looked from Q to Ben and back to Q. “You’re engaged? Since when are you engaged? Did your father put you up to this? I swear he’ll do anything to get out of trouble, stayin’ on that gawdforsaken island instead of coming home and spending the holy days with his muthah and daughtah.”
“No, Bubbe. Daddy didn’t put me up to anything and the Cayman Islands are really nice, you should visit.” Q said, futilely trying to tamp down the brewing feud between her father and her grandmother.
“How nice could they be? There’s not even a synagogue. What the hell is he going to do for Yom Kippur? So, when did this happen?” She asked without pausing.
“Yesterday,” said Q.
“A week Sunday,” said Ben at the same time.
“So which is it? Yesterday or last week?” Constance looked at Q.
“Last week.” Q corrected herself, giving Ben a dissatisfied look. “We didn’t get a chance to tell anyone because of this….”
“Murder. You mean the murder you came upon. Somethin' else you like to keep to yourself.” Constance looked piercingly at Ben. “And you? You’re not proud to be marryin' my granddaughtah?”
Ben was caught off guard. “Proud as I can be, ma’am. Just didn’t feel right… celebrating just now.”
Constance looked at both of them and said, “Life is for the living, my dahlins. If you let death get in the way, you'll nevah be alive.”
Turning to Ben she continued, “Now, if you tell me you’re converting, I’m going to die of happiness right here on the spot.”
“Sorry,” Q answered, turning to Ben. “You’re not, are you?”
“Nope. Still Catholic.” He shrugged.
“Better you should be Catholic. I didn’t want to have to fake a heart attack.” She took his arm and guided him across the room. Q drained her glass of wine and grabbed another before she followed them.
That went surprisingly well.
Constance was deftly guiding Ben around the room, proudly announcing, "Have you met my granddaughtah's fiancé?"
Q intentionally straggled behind, awkwardly accepting any 'Mazel tov's' coming her way. When she spied familiar face by the coffee bar, she quickly made a tactical strike, immediately recognizing her only means of escape from the inevitable follow-up question: 'so, is he Jewish?'
In her rush of relief in finding a plausible reason to get away from the soon-to-be gossiping crowd, she affectionately looped her arm through Detective Sanger's and said, in her best Constance Toledano impression, "So, Aaron, when are you going to find a nice girl and settle down?"
Sanger’s entire body stiffened in discomfort. "Ms. Toledano, what a surprise."
Immediately recognizing her overreach, she let go of his arm and explained, "Sorry, we just told Bubbe about the engagement and I'm pretty sure everybody in the room will know in about.... ten or so seconds. Also, that Ben's not Jewish. And then there'll be the 'how will you raise the childrens' and the 'will you keep koshers' and lord knows what else...."
When Sanger nervously looked around and ignored her, Q continued, "Anyway, since cops are sworn to serve and protect and all..."
He looked around one more time before setting down his untouched coffee and taking her arm back in his. He inhaled deeply and made a futile attempt to smile.
"Are you alright?" she asked. “Don’t tell me. Bubbe tried to fix you up with one the fine divorcees of Temple B’nai Shalom, again." She leaned in and looked around dramatically to make sure that nobody was listening, before saying, "Look, not for nothing, there actually are a couple of hot single moms here, you may want to give her the benefit of the doubt.”
He relaxed slightly and replied, “I’ll keep that in mind, but that’s not it.”
“Then what is it? You’re not about to arrest one of my friends for murder again, are you?” she joked.
Sanger’s face fell and he quickly walked them to a quiet corner. "You need to call your uncle," he spoke in a low serious whisper.
"Why? Is something wrong?" she asked, concerned.
"Just call your uncle," he said. "Promise me. Tonight. As soon as you leave services."
"What's with the cloak and dagger routine? Just tell me what's going on," she chided.
Sanger looked at her, his face softened somewhat, "Just call Ernst. He'll explain. I promise."
Before Q could press him for more details, her grandmother and Ben approached. Constance took one look at Q's arm through Sanger's and their conspiratorial pose and said, "Sorry, Aaron, you should have come to my Seder table the first time I invited you." She turned to Ben and said, "If he had, you might be the lonesome one tonight."
"It was my first Passover in town. I was there for the next one, though, wasn't I?" Sanger interjected.
"And so was he," Constance replied, gesturing to Ben.
Sanger frowned momentarily and looked at Q. As quickly as the darkness crossed his face, it vanished and he gave Constance a roguish smile. "Ms. Constance, you forget I'm a detective. I can search out a fix up from a mile away."
"You tried to fix up Q with another man while we were dating?" Ben asked, clearly more than a little taken aback.
"Not while y'all were dating,” she corrected. Her hands formed the weighing plates on an invisible scale. “Maybe while you two were sleeping together, but I don’t count that as dating." Constance winked at him and took a sip of her wine. "Oh, don't look so shocked, baby, I was young once."
As she gracefully entered her eighties, Constance Toledano began to delight in shocking anyone under the age of fifty with bawdy humor, sexual innuendo, and extreme bluntness. Her uptown graces and well-dressed manners initially concealed these tendencies, and even if one had experience with her, it still came as shocking. And Constance loved to be shocking.
She smoothed her sterling up-do and fixed her blue eyes on Sanger. "So, what was so wrong with my granddaughtah that you refused my invitation?"
"Dating my partner's goddaughter didn't seem like such a great idea to me. We are armed, after all. Seemed highly likely that if I messed up, it wouldn't end well for me." Sanger extracted himself from Q and approached Constance, taking her arm. "It was my loss, though."
"Because my granddaughtah is beautiful, smart, and Jewish?" Constance suggested.
Sanger shook his head. "No, because I missed an opportunity to eat your delicious charoset brisket."
Sanger and Constance began to walk towards the exit as services were announced. Ben wrapped his arm around Q's waist and she reciprocated.
"You're awfully quiet, darlin'. You okay?" he asked as they followed behind.
Q nodded. "Yeah, fine. Sanger wants me to call Ernst. Acted like it was urgent, but wouldn't tell me why."
"It's probably nothing," Ben soothed.
"Didn't sound like nothing,” she said more to herself than to Ben.
~~~
By the time Q reached the Burgundy Street Oyster bar, she regretted her decision to put on her black Acid Bath t-shirt with her linen shorts. The same weather pattern in the Gulf that was keeping a late-blossoming hurricane away from Louisiana had turned both the heat and humidity up to eleven overnight. She opened the door to the darkened restaurant and was instantly grateful for the cool air-conditioned air. She shivered and wiped the sweat from her eyes, looking around to see if Ernst had beaten her to a table. She soon found him in a darkened alcove, sipping a beer and watching the football stats on the TV beside the bar.
Q threaded her way through the crowded tables and past the oak bar, waving at Ernst when he saw her.
“Ordered us some char-oysters,” he said by way of a greeting. His dark face looked more careworn than his newly found love of tropical shirts and cargo shorts let on.
“Sounds good,” she replied, sitting down across from him. She waved to the waiter and pointed to Ernst’s beer. He nodded and quickly appeared with a cold bottle.
“So, how are you enjoying retirement?” she asked her godfather, after the waiter had departed.
“I’d enjoy it a little more if people would quit asking me that,” he quipped.
Q sipped her beer. “Fair enough. So, what’s going on? What’s with all the cloak and dagger?”
“You’re impatient, just like your Daddy, you know that?” Ernst grinned. He nodded at the television, "Saints are looking more like the Ain'ts this year. Gonna be a long season."
She dropped the casual tone out of her voice. “What’s going on, Ernst? Are you sick?”
“No, Clementine, I’m not sick, I….” he began, stopping short when the waiter arrived with a platter of two dozen charbroiled oysters, dripping in butter, parmesan, and garlic.
“Anything else?” the waiter asked, looking from Ernst to Q.
“Two more beers and some privacy,” Ernst replied.
They ate their first few oysters in silence until the waiter returned with their beers and disappeared as requested.
Ernst stretched his long legs under the table, getting comfortable. “There a reason you didn't tell me about that dead body you found a couple weeks ago?"
She shook her head. "Figured Sanger would let you know. I've had enough death for a lifetime. Just didn't want to talk about it. I do have some news though. Good news for once."
Ernst took her left hand into his calloused one and smiled. "Constance told me. Sorry to steal you thunder. But that is wonderful news. I'm so happy for both of you."
He let go of her hand, patting the back of it before he sat back in his chair.
"You know how many unsolved murders I left?” he asked.
“I don’t know, three or four?” she asked. “Not counting Katrina.”
“That’s what the records say, but that’s not quite the truth. It’s an even dozen,” he said. “Not counting Katrina.”
He paused and pulled apart some French bread, dipping it in an empty oyster shell.
“All women. All either beaten to death or strangled. All died in February, save one.”
Q suddenly lost her appetite and slowly sipped her beer. “Which one?”
“You want to take a crack at that?” he asked calmly.
“Angela Galvez,” she stated.
“You would have made a damn good criminologist. It’s too bad you dropped out of college.” He pulled apart some more bread and carefully placed one oyster on top.
“But you thought Ben…” she started.
“I thought Ben may have killed Angela, crime of passion, but not the others. It wasn’t until you and Ben started dating, and I stopped thinking that he was the guilty party, that it finally occurred to me that Angela’s death was the first murder, not the one that happened the following February,” he explained.
The fact that Ernst was glossing over how he came to the conclusion of Ben’s innocence didn’t surprise her. While they weren’t related by blood, Q and Ernst had one trait in common: they both hated to be confronted with proof that they were wrong. After Q had moved in with Ben, Ernst had come to their doorstep, furious at her for not heeding his warnings. In his defense, Ernst feared for her safety, but it wasn’t until Q pulled out the photo album that he would listen to reason. She'd pointed to time-stamped image after time-stamped image of Ben at Oschner Hospital in Metairie with his family the night that Angela was killed. The same night that Anita’s son was born. Their conversation had ended with Q exclaiming, “You want to tell me how Ben leaves his family at the Waffle House in Metairie at five in the morning, somehow drives all the way to the lower Garden District, and manages to beat and strangle Angela to death by seven, with nobody hearing or seeing him?”
“So once you knew that Ben wasn’t guilty…” she prompted.
“…it opened up a new line of inquiry,” he finished. “One in which I hadn’t solved Angela’s murder after all.”
Ernst finally took a bite of his bread and chewed thoughtfully.
“So,” he said around his bite. “After I’d ruled him out for Angela, thanks to you, I went back to review my case notes to see how I could have gotten it so wrong. You have to understand, Clementine, I felt miserable thinking that I could have put a man like him behind bars for something there’s no way he could have done. After you showed me those pictures and I started to get to know him..." Ernst paused and looked at her intently. “He’s a good man.”
Q smiled and said, “I know. But it means a lot, coming from you.”
He patted her hand. “Anyway, after that, it all clicked into place. The same pattern over and over. New man, new bruises, dead girl…all around February 14, save Angela Galvez."
"Someone's got a fucked up idea of a romantic Valentine's,” she retorted, before popping an oyster in her mouth.
"Not Valentine’s, Clementine,” Ernst corrected. “Angela Galvez’s birthday.”
“It's the same guy,” Q stated, mystified.
“Exactly.” Ernst nodded. “Killed one and got away with it. Almost got away with pinning it on the man he stole her away from, no thanks to me. The way I figure it, he got a taste for it and moved onto the next girl.”
“But if this has been happening every year since Angie died, there’d be, like, eleven dead girls. That’s enough of a pattern to be noticed,” she said incredulous.
Ernst sighed a world-weary tone. “Unfortunately, Clementine, a woman being beaten to death by someone she knows isn’t as unusual an occurrence as it should be. There was evidence in a few of the cases, seven to be exact, that pointed to an ex-boyfriend or ex-husband. Five of those cases ended in an acquittal. Two men are sitting in Angola for crimes of passion that, given what I know now, they most likely did not commit.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Q asked.
“I don't like to leave things undone. When I retired, I gave Aaron my case files. When I put it all together, I gave him my notes. Told him my theories. He’s a sharp boy. As soon as he saw the Hunter crime scene, he knew it was our guy.” He folded his arms across his chest and nodded appreciatively.
“But still, that’s good, right? He can find who did this to Beth and all the others?” she asked, dipping a piece of French bread into a sauce-filled shell.
“He shared his theory with his lieutenant, trusting someone he shouldn’t have. The new lieutenant in his precinct is a real piece of work. Been trying to make a name for himself since he started on the force. Kind of man who loves hearing his name best when it’s being spoken by a reporter. And he’s got an easy suspect, connected to the victim, with no alibi for the time she was killed. Bonus points for being able to drag the Toledano name through the muck and ruin the girl that almost ruined him.”
Q started to shake. Ernst took her hand. She told him, “He was at Beth’s funeral. I didn’t think…I thought maybe he knew her family…” she paused as she made sense of Ernst’s last few words. “Oh my god. He’s coming after Ben.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I really am. You need to call Lucy Hadron and get her number in Ben’s phone on speed dial. Aaron says their case is all circumstantial, but two men went to jail because they didn’t lawyer up in time and when they did, they didn’t hire a good one. The evidence I had on them was barely stronger than what they've got on Ben now.”
He looked down and away from her face. Unable to make eye contact while admitting his role in sending two innocent men to prison, he looked up at the television instead.
“What does he have on him?” Q asked, fear pooling in her stomach.
“Not enough to charge him, but Gabrielli’s been known to put his thumb on the scale.” He took a sip of beer. “You’re going to be questioned, too. Better start planning what you’re going to say.”
Vincent Gabrielli. Just the name was enough to turn Q’s veins to ice water. “How should I play it?”
