That Old Devil Sin Read online

  That Old Devil Sin

  Clementine Toledano Mysteries: Book I

  a novel by W.E. DeVore

  That Old Devil Sin

  ALSO BY W.E. DeVORE

  Clementine Toledano Mysteries

  That Old Devil Sin

  Devil Take Me Down

  Chasing Those Devil Bones

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 W.E. DeVore

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 0692622624

  ISBN-13: 978-0692622629

  Anxious Laughter Publishing

  To Chris, Kyle, and Nathan –

  Thanks for the adventures, Boys.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Author would like to thank the amazing group of friends and family who lent support, constructive feedback, and encouragement throughout the writing and editing process: Phil Garfinkel, Jim Boitnott, John and Jackie DeVore, and, last, but not least, Heather Thomas, resident Society maven and all around badass. Special thanks to Deborah Grabien for her sage advice and wisdom.

  Ida’s Place

  Driving across the Causeway with Tom Wills was always an advanced exercise in ignoring your own imminent danger of dying in a fiery car crash and plunging into the depths of Lake Pontchartrain. Thankfully, Q couldn’t hear her inner self-preservation mechanisms scream over the ever-increasing level of Pearl Jam on the stereo.

  “Check this part out," Tom yelled as he turned up the stereo and lit a joint. Both hands now were completely off the wheel as he placed the old Jeep under the guidance of his knees. He passed Q the joint and, using his index fingers as sticks, he pounded on the steering wheel like an imaginary snare drum to beat out the same rhythm that was blasting through the car stereo. In his best Eddie Vedder impression, he crooned “Keepin’ us close, so close."

  Q handed the joint back to Tom, hoping he’d put one hand back on the wheel. No such luck. Joint hanging off his lower lip, drumming with his fingers, and driving with his left knee so that his right leg would be free to thump out the kick drum pattern, Tom extolled upon the genius of Pearl Jam. Q sighed and kept her foot on an imaginary brake pedal. Gripping the door handle with white knuckles, she watched the speedometer inch up to ninety, back down to fifty at the first turnaround, then back up to ninety after the coast was clear of the highway patrol. The Causeway only had a couple of turn-around bridges connecting the directional lanes. These were the only places the highway patrol could set up a speed trap, and Tom knew it.

  “Hey, hand me a Purple Haze, will ya?”

  Q rolled her eyes, but obediently opened the cooler between her feet and pulled out two of Tom’s signature beverages. If she was going to die, she may as well have a buzz, and she knew better than to try to explain to Tom that drinking while driving was a poor life decision. She also knew that any hint of a lecture from her about Tom’s driving would result in a real lecture from him about her lack of both an automobile and a license to operate one.

  Halfway across the bridge, Tom finally turned down the CD player to ask, “So where are we playing tonight?”

  “I don’t know, some dive bar outside of Hammond. Charlie likes to go there.”

  Charlie Bourdel was a mad trumpet player and slightly better than decent blues guitarist. Although, if you asked Charlie, he’d tell you that he was a rock guitar god who played trumpet ‘to pay the bills.'

  Tom took a long, thoughtful pull on what was left of his beer. “Wait, this isn’t the place he likes to hang out in on Wednesdays? The one with some sort of amateur stripper night?”

  “They call it ’Lingerie Night’ but, yeah, that’s the one.”

  “I don’t know, Q, girls in see-through lace panties, grinding on a pole sounds an awful lot like strippers to me.”

  “I think those poles actually hold up the roof.”

  “And can you really call them amateurs if they’re getting paid?” Tom pondered.

  Q wasn’t enjoying Tom’s philosophical musings as much as he seemed to be. “Depends on whether you consider grimy dollar bills shoved into your underwear ‘getting paid.'"

  “Whatever. If it struts like a stripper and grinds like a stripper, I’m all for it.” He grinned like a lunatic and winked at her.

  She shook her head in mild distaste. “Hate to disappoint you, babe, but the ‘lingerie models’ won’t be there tonight."

  “Ah man! And here I was thinkin’ I could get me a date with one of Charlie’s handoffs.” He elbowed Q hard and smiled. She started laughing. Tom Wills had locked eyes on Camilla St. John seven years ago and never looked at another woman again. Charlie was another story entirely. If there was a girl with a bad boy fetish within half a mile, Charlie was sure to find her out.

  Tom threw his empty beer bottle under the passenger seat and teased, “You’re such a fuckin’ lush, Q.”

  She drained what was left of hers and stuck out her tongue in disgust. “I have no idea how you drink this crap.”

  She tossed the bottle under her seat with a clink as they pulled up to the tollbooth.

  “It never stops you from helping me empty my cooler though does it,” he replied as he sprayed on a generous dose of cologne in an attempt to cover up the cloying smell of marijuana and stale beer that permeated the Jeep.

  He pulled up to the tollbooth and smiled at the heavy-set black woman sitting inside.

  “Evenin’ darlin’, how you doin’ tonight?” he asked in his best Terrebonne parish drawl.

  He handed over a ten-dollar bill. The woman, clearly not charmed, handed him his change without saying a word.

  “Was it something I said?” Tom smiled at the lady, not moving an inch.

  The tollbooth operator put her hands on her considerable hips and glared at him.

  “You breakin’ my heart, baby.” He tipped an imaginary hat and pulled away, navigating them towards Hammond and the gig that awaited.

  Q and her boys had been playing in their fairly successful New Orleans jazz and blues combo, QT and the Beasts, for the last six years, but they were all getting a little bored with corporate and society gigs, even though they paid the bills and then some. A few months back, Charlie had convinced them it’d be fun to do a lo-fi rock band, Bourdello, on the side, just for kicks. The fact that it satisfied Charlie’s rock legend self-image didn’t slip past anyone, but the songs he gave them were fun to play and blowing off steam by rocking out a couple times a month was putting new life into QT and the Beasts. It had also put an end to the creative power struggle that had been building up between Q and Charlie. Tonight was Bourdello’s third gig and they were driving forty miles to play for free drinks at a dive bar nobody but Charlie would go into under normal circumstances.

  It was well past dark when they pulled into the gravel parking lot at Ida’s Place off Highway 55. Charlie was already there waiting for them, leaning up against his beat-up, used-to-be-blue F150 and smoking a cigarette.

  Charlie Bourdel stood five foot nothing without his combat boots. His long, black, curly hair was caught up in a high ponytail that reached the middle of his back. He kept a switchblade in his right combat boot, a .45 in his guitar case, and could and would willingly hurt anybody who made the mistake of messing with him. Between the badass attitude and the fifty-pound chip on his shoulder, you’d think he had a fatal case of little man syndrome; you’d be dead wrong. He was one-hundred-and-thirty pounds sopping wet of swagger and confidence.

  The first time Q met Charlie, he had his arm around a gorgeous redhead who was a good five inches taller than him without the four-in
ch heels she was wearing. Charlie had strutted into the club where Q was singing like he owned the place and every woman in it. You could almost hear the panties sliding down as he walked through the crowd. Q’s, however, had held firmly in place, a phenomenon that puzzled Charlie to this day.

  “Y’all heard from Pete tonight?” Charlie asked as they walked around to the back of Tom’s Jeep and started unloading.

  “Nope,” Q said, “I thought he was riding up with you.”

  “He called yesterday and told me he’d meet us here. Said he needed to take care of some business in Baton Rouge or something.”

  “You try callin’ him?” Tom asked as he lifted his kick drum case out.

  “No, numbnuts, what a brilliant fuckin’ idea.” Charlie grabbed two of the drum cases. “Of course I called him. He’s usually the first one in. His cell keeps going to voicemail.”

  Q and Tom hefted out his hardware case.

  “She was a good ol’ girl, but I just had to go and kill her,” Tom joked as they set it down.

  Charlie and Q cringed. Tom made the same joke about his hardware case every time they hauled the long rectangular box into a gig. Nicknamed, ‘The Coffin,’ it was heavily burdened with cymbal stands, Tom’s drum throne, various accessories, and any random piece of percussion Tom decided to load into it. Heaving the beast in and out of Tom’s Jeep was the worst part of most gigs.

  While Charlie and Tom unpacked the drum kit to carry into the bar piece by piece, Q got on her cell and called Pete.

  Pete’s recorded voice said, “You have reached Pete “The Pocket” Fontain, leave me a message.”

  An automated female voice followed up with, “We’re sorry. Mailbox is full.”

  “Damn it,” Q muttered and headed into Ms. Ida’s Place to assess the quality of the sound system. As usual, she was underwhelmed. Ms. Ida had spared every expense in her Place, from the dingy acoustic tile on the low ceiling, to the lopsided speakers dangling haphazardly from chains in front of what could only loosely be described as a stage. Both were covered with an inch of dust and God only knew what else. Q pushed aside her sudden desire to bathe in hand sanitizer.

  She was about to walk back out when she felt a hand on her lower back. A familiar gravelly voice whispered in her ear, “Where you goin’, QT pie?”

  Q steeled herself.

  Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

  Big, beautiful Ben Bordelon. Ben owned Lafitte’s Cove in uptown New Orleans, specializing in good jazz, good cigars, and good Scotch, and located in a shady enough neighborhood to make its society clientele feel like they were walking on the wild side while sipping their twenty dollar cocktails. Tall and gorgeous, Ben looked like a modern-day Viking. The top of his long blonde hair was pulled neatly back into a ponytail, letting the rest of it hang free. He had ditched his usual black suit and French cuffs for dark jeans and a gray pinstriped button-down, but he carried himself like he was dressed for a black-tie Mardi gras ball. Q visualized the angel tattoo that covered the entirety of his torso, feet touching the top of his pubic hair, wings reaching the tips of his shoulders, and felt herself blushing. How she knew about Ben’s tattoo was a matter of some personal embarrassment.

  Under normal circumstances, Q could resist any man who thought his Louisiana charm was a good enough reason for her to go to bed with him, but not Ben. From what Q had seen of his dating habits, his womanizing made Charlie seem like a priest in comparison. He had invited her for drink after a gig almost a year ago. The drink had transitioned to an hour of fondling and kissing in his car in the parking lot and then back to the dingy studio apartment attached to his club for two more hours of borderline tantric sex. After that, Q was hooked, and like any addiction, cold turkey was the best cure. So, she avoided him. She refused good paying gigs at his club. She left parties as soon as she saw him across the room. She had been successfully avoiding him, in fact, for exactly four weeks and six days since her last unfortunate lapse of good decision making had landed her naked on the pool table in the Cove after her last gig there, staring up at that angel and not giving a good goddamn about any resolutions she had made.

  “Where you been hidin’, girlie?”

  Damn, he smells good.

  Q’s mouth watered.

  “Hey Ben, how’s it going? What are you doing here?” Q asked, simultaneously thinking, Please say you were just leaving please say you were just leaving.

  “Came to check you out. Heard you and Charlie got your little rock thing going on finally.” He slid his hand up to her neck and traced his finger up to her hairline. Q tried not to moan. “You cut your hair. I like this sexy punk chick look. Don’t know if all them uptown ladies are going to let you sing at their parties looking like that. Might have to lock their husbands down more than usual.”

  His raspy voice was hypnotic. Q struggled to maintain her resolve.

  “So glad you approve,” she said as sarcastically as she could muster. “Look, Ben, we’ve got to set up and I still need to figure out a bass rig.”

  She tried to push him away, but Ben put his arm around her and pulled her back to him.

  “Where’s Pete?” he said casually. “Thought he went in on your little rocker-girl trip with the other two lost boys.”

  “He did. He’s just not here. Look I …”

  Suddenly, Ben was kissing her. Slow and deep and the world stopped. Q was paralyzed. And then, just as suddenly, he let go and was walking away.

  “I’ll let you get back to it. Holler at you later, kid,” he said as he strode over to the bar. The fact that the only other three women in the bar were obviously staring at the front of his jeans did not escape Q nor, she suspected, did it escape Ben. She stood still for a moment, trying to slow her heart rate so that she wouldn’t stumble on the way out the door. She had barely recovered enough to walk out, when she turned and careened right into Tom.

  “Jesus, Scare, watch out,” Q quipped at Tom. Tom Wills may as well have been named Ichabod Crane. He was gangly as a scarecrow and only half as graceful. Though he was fully aware of his inherent lack of grace, Tom’s coordination when he wasn’t behind a drum set was deficient, at best.

  He nodded in Ben’s direction and gave her a knowing smile. “I see your boy’s here.”

  “He’s not my boy.” She tried to sound nonchalant and knew she was failing miserably.

  “Didn’t look that way from where I was standing.” Tom winked at her and hefted his kick drum into the corner of the stage.

  Charlie walked past them, pushing his guitar rig. “You dropped something, Q.”

  “What?” she asked, looking around.

  “The key to that chastity belt of yours, somewhere over there…” He nodded in Ben’s general direction. Q blushed despite herself.

  “Fuck you." She changed the subject to the problem she could actually solve. "What are we going to do for a bass rig?”

  Charlie stopped and sighed. “Got my spare guitar, an octave pedal, and a direct box. If you think you can hang, I’ll set it up.”

  She thought for a second and decided her one-finger bass playing on an artificially tuned down guitar would be better than no bass at all. “Guess we’ll make do.”

  Charlie reached into his back pocket, pulled out a blue bandana, and handed it to her as he walked past to finish setting up. “Wipe your chin off, darlin’, we got work to do.”

  She realized she had been staring across the room at Ben sipping his whiskey, his amber eyes staring right back at her. She shook her head and snapped the bandana at Charlie.

  Christ, this was going to be a long night.

  ~~~

  By some miracle, Bourdello finished their set without a ‘you suck!’ hollered from the crowd or Q getting mauled by a drunken refinery worker. As they were finishing packing up the stage, she gratefully accepted the glass of vodka handed to her without looking up from the cable she was winding. As soon as his hand touched hers, she knew who had bought her the drink.

/>   Crap.

  “Decent set, Q. I could get into this new rocker vibe you’ve got going. Not for the Cove, of course, but maybe my new place in Baton Rouge. How’s about riding with me back across the Causeway. Got some business I need to talk to you about.”

  Tom spoke up. “Sorry, Ben. Q’s my copilot. Need some help keeping awake and watching out for the po-po.”

  Ben looked at Q. “That true, darlin’? You gonna babysit the scarecrow? Or you gonna ride with me.”

  She drained her drink in one gulp; her brilliant avoidance plan was clearly no longer working. “Guess I’ll ride with you.”

  Charlie walked over and said in a low voice, “You sure, Q? We got you.”

  “It’s cool, man. Thanks. I’ll be fine.” She stared at Charlie until he shrugged and went back to putting his guitar into his case.

  Charlie hated Ben. Q didn’t quite understand why. They were two peas in whore-mongering pod, if you asked her. It didn’t help matters that playing at Ben’s club generated the gigs that paid most of his bills, so Charlie had to play nice. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t use any excuse to beat up on Ben if he could ever get away with it. Luckily for all their bank accounts, such an occasion had never arisen. Although given the extreme height differential, Q wasn’t entirely sure that any such occasion would work out in Charlie’s favor.

  She walked out with Tom and Charlie to help load up the gear.

  “Q, men are the ones who think with their dicks, a woman’s s’posed to be smarter.” Tom shook his head. “I just don’t get it.”

  “I can’t avoid him forever, Tommy.”

  Charlie chimed in, “Damn straight, Q. I lost nearly a grand not playing those two shows at the Cove last month, not to mention the shows we probably could've booked for Mardi gras. Now put on your big girl pants and take one for the team, for fuck’s sake.”