The Devil's Luck Read online

  “I started cramping then bleeding, bad. They had to do a D&C,” she said. “The doctor says I’ll be okay. But the baby…”

  Her voice trailed off and she started to cry in earnest. Ben held her hand and waited for her to stop.

  “How’s your blood pressure?” he finally asked.

  She shook her head and wiped her eyes with the tissue he handed her. “It was through the roof when I came in. With that and the bleeding…there wasn’t much else they could do. There wasn’t a heartbeat by the time they did the ultrasound, anyway.”

  “Have they taken your blood pressure recently?” he asked.

  “They just took it again a little while ago, back to 110/70 like magic. The doctor says I should have some tests done before we try again.” She pointed to the paperwork at the foot of the bed. “It’s all in there with the release papers. We can leave. Sanger and I were just waiting for you.”

  Ben exhaled in relief. “I’m in no hurry to see you sick like this anytime soon. Come on, let’s get you home.”

  He picked up the plastic bag in the corner of the room and pulled out the linen shorts that Sanger had neatly folded before placing them inside. A large blood stain bloomed from the middle and he quickly shoved it back into the bag.

  “Leave those here. I don’t want them,” she said.

  He threw them into the trash and took off the black-and-grey-striped button-down shirt he was wearing. He helped her into it and rinsed the blood off her Converse as best he could in the sink in the corner by the door before carefully drying them and slipping them onto her feet.

  “I left my satchel at Picorelli’s. Sanger called them while we were waiting. They’re holding it for me,” she said.

  As they drove down St. Charles, Q stared out the window, inwardly punishing herself for every action she had taken from the moment she’d woken up that morning. When they pulled up to Picorelli’s, she waited inside the running car, watching Ben disappear inside to retrieve her bag. She shivered and turned off the A/C, rubbing her bare legs. Ben emerged with her satchel and a paper grocery bag.

  “What’s in the bag?” she asked.

  “Supplies for you, and I thought you might like a little wine. Also, Sanger’s notebook and a box of condoms he left behind. Owner asked if we could get it back to him,” he explained, pulling them back into traffic towards home. “I’m guessing the condoms were your doing?”

  “You know me so well, husband. I’m tired of seeing him moping all the time. He needs a woman. Like yesterday. Can you drink wine with Vicodin?” she asked.

  “I’m going to go with, yes. Grace said it hurt like hell without anesthesia. I think you earned a little buzz,” he said. “Did it?”

  “Hurt like hell?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Well, if that’s what they consider moderate cramping, I’m definitely going to need all the drugs if I ever actually have a baby,” she joked, but it fell flat.

  Ben reached over and squeezed her bare knee.

  “All the drugs, it is, when it’s time,” he said, forcing his voice to be light.

  Q closed her eyes and turned her face to the window to hide her tears from Ben. She watched the buildings glide past her and tried to think of something, anything, besides the pain in her abdomen and in her heart. When the thought finally came, she blinked away her tears and dried her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Ben,” she said. “Mike didn’t drink whiskey. He couldn’t stand it.”

  “What are you talking about, darlin’?” he asked, turning onto their street.

  “Sanger said that there was heroin, whiskey, and overflowing ashtrays when he found Mike’s body. Mike’s house reeked of stale whiskey. It’s part of what made me so sick that morning. But Mike didn’t drink whiskey. Ever. He only drank wine or rum. I need to call Sanger,” she said, reaching for her satchel to retrieve her phone.

  Ben parked the car in their driveway and took a deep, frustrated breath. “Clementine, you just had a miscarriage. You still have dried blood on your legs for fuck’s sake. Not right now. Aaron can wait.”

  “Ben…” she started, already knowing her husband dropping an f-bomb in the same breath as her given name was a signal that she was about to lose a fight.

  “Don’t you start with me, Clementine. I’ve been patient. I’ve been understanding. I’ve been helplessly watching my wife look like she’s fucking dying for the past three weeks and I’m fucking done with it. You are going inside our house. You are going upstairs and taking a shower. You are going to get that sweet ass of yours in our bed, and you are going to lay the fuck down and take care of yourself. I’m putting my foot down,” Ben barked.

  “Can I still have a glass of wine?” she asked, trying to diffuse the situation.

  He looked at her seriously. “And you are not getting involved with another murder.”

  “Ben, I have pertinent information to a police investigation. I’m not going to go hunt down killers with Sanger. I have no desire to ever do that again. I swear,” she said. “But he needs to know this. Mike was my friend. Yours, too. If someone killed him, I want to make sure the son-of-a-bitch gets caught.”

  Ben exhaled and nodded in agreement. “Alright then, you can call Aaron.” Q reached for her phone and he stopped her. “After you go inside our house, take a shower, get in bed, and lay down. Aaron can come to you if it’s so damned urgent.”

  She realized there was no way she was going to win this argument and the aching in her lower back was helping to convince her not to even try and fight back.

  “Fine, you win,” she said.

  Ben smiled and said, “Could you say that one more time? Don’t think I’ve heard that for a while.”

  “Fuck you. You win,” she repeated, smiling back.

  He kissed her on the cheek and walked around to help her out of the car. When she stood up, he held her to him for a moment before saying, “I won the minute you agreed to let me drive you home four years ago.”

  ◆◆◆

  Despite her outward objections, Q had to admit that lying in bed with three pillows behind her back, two more under her knees, and a heating pad on her angry uterus felt something akin to heaven. She sighed and reached for her glass of wine on the nightstand.

  Vicodin plus pinot noir equals amazeballs.

  She rested back, listening to the mockingbird in the live oak outside. She wanted to be sad. To wallow. But feeling healthy and revived made it difficult to mourn the thing that had been the cause of her illness. Even if that thing would have become a child she had wanted to meet.

  Q heard Ben move in the kitchen below, making dinner. He hadn’t allowed her to call Sanger, insisting that he would call, and he alone would set the ground rules for her cooperation. She wasn’t in a position to argue.

  The doorbell rang, and she looked expectantly at the open doorway to her bedroom, waiting for Sanger or her grandmother or one of Ben’s sisters to appear. She was surprised to find her husband walking into the room alone.

  “Aaron’s here,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Did you know that the mockingbird outside our window knows most of at least two Michael Jackson songs?” she replied.

  “So that’s a ‘pretty good,’” he said with a smile.

  “That’s a ‘pretty amazing.’ It wasn’t amazing without the wine. It was an achy and a vaguely crampy kind of bleh. But with the wine…” she whistled and moved her hand like a rocket ship to the moon.

  “Right over the top,” he finished.

  “Oh, and did I mention that I’m hungry and don’t want to puke?” she asked.

  Ben sat down on the edge of the bed and cupped her face in his hands. “Did I mention that you don’t look like an extra in a zombie movie anymore?”

  Q licked her index fingertip and made an imaginary checkmark in the air. “Score one for me.”

  “You alright to talk to Aaron?” he asked.

  “Totally fine,” she said, settling into h
er narcotic induced happiness. Q looked at him critically. “Although, if we’re being honest, on the scale of shitty days, Bordelon, this is right up there. And my bar for shitty days is pretty fucking high.”

  “So, are you,” he stated, his grin widening.

  “Yeppers,” she agreed. “Hope that’s not a bad thing?”

  Ben kissed her on the forehead and said, “No, darlin’, you enjoy yourself. I’ll send Aaron up, so you can play pretend cop.”

  “Ah-uh-ah…pretend investigator,” she corrected, slurring slightly.

  Ben laughed to himself and walked into the hallway. He called downstairs to Sanger, “Come on up, Aaron. Don’t know how much use she’ll be to you, but come on.”

  Q sighed and closed her eyes, listening to the mockingbird keeping on with its force-don’t-stops until Sanger materialized in the room and sat down on Ben’s side of the bed.

  “Brought you some matzo ball soup,” he said without preamble.

  Q glanced around the room in confusion.

  “Did I miss it?” she asked.

  “Ben’s heating it up downstairs,” he explained. “I can’t believe you’re drinking while you’re taking Vicodin.”

  “You have your cervix dilated and your uterus vacuumed out without anesthesia, and then you can judge,” she replied.

  Sanger grimaced. “I knew I was going to regret that. Totally walked right into it, too. So, what is this pertinent information you were all hot and bothered to tell me.”

  Q pulled herself slightly more upright and took another sip of wine before setting the glass down on the nightstand.

  “Mike didn’t drink whiskey,” she said. “Like ever.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t follow,” he replied.

  “When we were there at his house, when you found him, you said it looked like a one-man party. Heroin. Whiskey. Cigarettes. And I didn’t think about it until today, but Mike couldn’t stand whiskey,” she explained. “He got alcohol poisoning drinking it when he was a teenager. Never touched it again. Didn’t want anyone else to touch it either when they were around him. Couldn’t stand the smell of it.”

  Sanger was skeptical. “I don’t know, Clementine. People do a lot of out-of-character things when they’re using drugs. Especially when they’re about to commit suicide.”

  Q shook her head. “You don’t understand. It was like this thing with him, ‘no whiskey allowed.’ Like what happened with Tom last year,” she explained as if Sanger should understand her train of thought.

  He smiled. “Well, that’s clear as mud. I’ll go get you some soup. You are way too high to help me right now.”

  She took a defiant sip of wine before scolding, “Would you just listen? Mike always had that big party at Mardi Gras…”

  “Yes, Clementine. I’ve heard the stories,” he interrupted with a smirk.

  “No, no. Not that. Focus, will you?” She backhanded his arm and continued, “A couple years back, Tom decides to bring some whiskey. Mike took it from him and threw it in the trash. He made Tom drink rum with him the rest of the night,” she said. When Sanger acted like she had just spoken random gibberish, she clarified her point for him. “Mike would rather someone drink his booze for free than drink their own whiskey at his house.”

  “So, what are you trying to say?” Sanger asked.

  “I don’t really know. But you said his blood-alcohol level was off the charts; that would make it easier to overdose. Maybe someone staged it to look like a one-man party, when it wasn’t,” she concluded. “They got him drunk, shot him up and then put a gun in his hand and helped him to pull the trigger. That’s why they made such a mess of it.”

  “Maybe. I’ll look into it, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up. There was something like thirty-seven cigarette butts in two ashtrays and they all had Mike Ackerman’s DNA on them,” Sanger said.

  “But that wouldn’t be hard. Incapacitate Mike. Light a cigarette. Put it in his mouth. Let it burn out. Rinse, repeat,” she argued.

  “How would someone light thirty-seven cigarettes without putting them in their own mouth to light them?” he asked.

  “Easy. Use one of those plastic filters,” she said with a shrug. “By the way, Mike started vaping as soon as that crap hit the street. Liked to make his orange flavored. The Emporium smelled like a freaking Jamba Juice anytime he was around.”

  Sanger gazed up at the ceiling and shook his head. “I swear you make me feel like an idiot sometimes.”

  “It’s the Vicodin,” she said, tapping her forehead. “Making me think outside the box.”

  She heard Ben’s footfalls on the stairs and he walked in carrying a tray. A steaming bowl sat in the middle. When the smell hit Q’s nose, her stomach let out an angry growl.

  “One dose of Jewish penicillin, courtesy of the NOPD, coming up,” he said, setting the tray down on Q’s lap.

  She stared in amazement at the large matzo ball surrounded by clear broth. “Don’t lie, Sanger. You swung by Bubbe’s and picked this up from Mavis,” Q said, taking a sip of the broth.

  Her grandmother’s cook and best friend, Mavis Jackson, was the best Kosher cook in Uptown New Orleans, Q’s second grandmother, and the creator of some of the best food Q had ever eaten, Kosher or no.

  Sanger folded his arms. “You taste that matzo ball and you tell me. I love Mavis, but her matzo balls are tough as nails and you know it.”

  She did as she was told. When her bite literally melted before she could move her jaw, she swallowed and said, “Oh my god, Sanger. Where did you learn to make something like this?”

  He stood up and Ben moved to shake his hand. Sanger took it and said to Q, “Trade secret.”

  Sanger bent down to kiss her on the forehead. “Take care of yourself. I’ll take a closer look at the whiskey and the cigarettes. Let you know if I find anything.”

  As he moved to leave, Q called, “Don’t forget. Friday dinner. Seven p.m., sharp.”

  Ben looked at her as if she’d just described a rainbow unicorn hallucination.

  “I convinced him to give it another go with Yvonne. It’s just Shabbat dinner. You’ll be cooking, not me,” she explained.

  Sanger glared at Q. “You’re serious. You still want to play matchmaker after everything that happened today?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do,” she replied. “And now you can’t refuse.”

  Sanger ran his fingers through his dark, curly hair. “Guess I’m not getting out of this.”

  “You could do a lot worse than Yvie,” Ben said.

  “Yeah, Gracie,” Q quipped. Ben’s youngest sister was as stubborn as Q but with a much greater flair for the dramatic. They could count on a new ‘love of her life’ showing up at Sunday dinner in regular six-week intervals.

  Sanger confirmed that he’d be there with wine at the appointed time. As he was halfway down the stairs, Q and Ben simultaneously called after him, “Don’t forget to bring that sexy brain of yours.”

  Ben’s younger sister, Yvonne, had taken one look at Detective Aaron Sanger and had thought about almost no one else since. The two had gone on one disastrous date when all of Yvie’s neurotic tendencies had bubbled up to the surface. Afterward, they’d managed a few good dates, but when Tori Gerard had killed herself, Sanger had thrown himself into work and had isolated himself from the world, more so than he’d been before his relationship with Tori had begun.

  Yvonne continued to apply pressure to both Q and Ben to use their influence with Sanger to get her back into his good graces. Over the months of whining, begging, and nagging, Q had begun to worry that Yvie had built up a persona around Sanger that would disappoint her once she realized that he had an actual personality and was not the Israeli-American version of Lord Bryon with a badge. But if it brought Sanger back from his grief, Q was willing to give it a try.

  “Finally,” Ben sighed, stretching out on his side of the bed, while Q finished her dinner. “I didn’t think you’d ever get him to agree to it.”

  “Me eith
er,” she said. “Took all my pregnant guilt powers and a box of condoms to get it done.”

  Her voice broke and she quickly wiped away the tears at the corner of her eyes.

  Ben leaned over and took the tray off her lap, setting it down on the floor beside him. Pulling her to him, she lay back into his embrace and he picked up her left hand, caressing the rings on her finger.

  “I love you, wife,” his gravelly voice whispered in her ear.

  “I love you, husband,” she whispered back, closing her eyes and resting against him.