Death By Rum Balls Page 2

  The moisture from his exaggerated exhales hung between us. “I’ve overheard them saying Julia is nouveau riche and ill-mannered when she leaves the room. They need their eyes and hearing checked because I’m not invisible or deaf.” Frank just shook his head making a tsk, tsk, tsk sound. For all his nutty behavior, he was loyal to Julia. He said, “That’s not the worst one though.”

  “There’s something worse than rats and hateful church ladies?” I asked.

  “Yep. She’s been seeing a married man until recently. The Queen,” the not so endearing term Frank used for Julia when she was out of audio range, “found out he was married to someone in her gourmet cooking group who is also in her Pilates class. Rather, the wife in Julia’s Pilates class found out her husband was seeing Julia when another gourmet club member let it slip—here in this kitchen—during a cooking class. Pilates threw a handful of flour at Julia and then proceeded to throw the entire twenty-pound bag all over the kitchen. Guess who had to clean that up?” Frank paused waiting for me to answer.

  “Please, Frank. It’s too cold for the pregnant pause,” I said.

  “I bet she didn’t tell you that one, did she?”

  “No. She didn’t,” I said. “Do you think this woman—the wife—is dangerous?”

  “I don’t know. She was on a tirade that day in our kitchen, and the other cooks ran and grabbed all the knives,” he said. “You know how Julia can press the wrong button on people.”

  “More like she can push all the buttons on the panel,” I said.

  “Brandy, you see stuff people do all the time. Keep an eye on the others tonight and not just that hot, new boyfriend of yours. Watch Julia’s back tonight, please? So will I when she doesn’t have me working like a slave.”

  “I’ll be here,” I said.

  “There’s one other thing. She invited her brother.”

  “The one she doesn’t get along with?” I asked as we watched Julia’s Mercedes pull into the drive and park all the way in the back of the house.

  “Yes. It’s the only brother she has.” Frank said and continued in a hurry, “The brother and his new wife of two weeks. Julia doesn’t know he’s married yet. He told me when he called to RSVP to the party.”

  “Wait. What?” I said just as Julia let her dogs out the front door, all of them. They ran and chased each other through the yard decorations, knocking over everything in their paths.

  Frank looked back and forth from the front door to me before he went back to his whisper, “She invited the cooking Pilates and her husband to the party tonight. They’re coming.”

  “Anything else, Frank?” I asked not thinking there could possibly be another issue in Julia’s life, but I have been wrong before and I was wrong now.

  “Her new boyfriend’s name is LB, and there’s something just not right about him.” Frank said and peeked around the manger again before he said, “Quick. She isn’t looking. Go.” Then he ran off around the manger in the opposite direction.

  My head was spinning from all the people Julia invited to the party, and who, according to Frank, all had a score to settle with her. I was looking forward to having a romantic holiday evening with my new boyfriend, Jiff. Now, Frank wanted me to be Julia’s wingman and watch for problems any one of a dozen guests might want to cause at this party tonight.

  I allowed myself to be distracted by all the decorations in an attempt to re-clutter my mind with something other than Julia’s problems, many of which she didn’t even know she had. Every inch of the lawn was decorated. The manger Frank and I hid behind had life-sized people and two sheep that raised and lowered their heads as if eating the bale of hay in front of them. Next to the manger was Santa in a sleigh with eight reindeer as tall as me with several elf characters loading the sleigh with toys. The elves were animated and moved in a circle on some powered track up to the sleigh and appeared to put a toy in it while Santa—who had audio—ho, ho, hoed his approval while his animated arm checked off a list he held in the other hand. There were spotlights on a snowman family surrounded by fake snow to one side of the big tree. They didn’t move.

  I loved Christmas. I liked all the decorations and enthusiasm Julia had for the holiday. There was nothing like the smell of a real tree. When I was growing up, my mother insisted my dad put up a fake tree in our house and bought all plastic ornaments that were the same color. She had it on a board with rollers she could roll in and out of a closet, throw a sheet over it, and never have to take it down or put it up. If we were still children, my mother would be an early adopter of the huge blow-up lawn monstrosities now popular. The choices were endless. There were blow-up snowmen, or snowmen families, Santas in helicopters, Santas with reindeer, and Santas with toys. Anything you could think of was made to be blown up into Hulk-size plastic proportions—their balloon likenesses tethered to the front lawn by night and deflated by day.

  I involuntarily shivered, but it was not from the cold.

  Chapter Two

  Frank went to straighten several of Santa’s reindeer Julia’s dogs had turned over in their enthusiastic romp all over the front yard. I took my time walking to the front door, still taking it all in and watching my step so I didn’t twist an ankle in the power cords. Julia opened the front door before I knocked. Her six or seven dogs—I’ve lost count—ran back to greet me barking, howling, and circling my feet. I hope she hadn’t seen Frank and me nose-to-nose behind the manger and would start asking questions.

  The common denominator for my friendship with Julia was our love for dogs. We rescued them, found homes for them, and helped each other do it. Julia had the patience of Job with dogs. With people, not so much—in fact, not at all. Saying whatever was on her mind is what got Julia fired and caused many of her fellow workers, including her manager, to have an instant dislike of her. I know Julia had it tough growing up and was on her own at an early age. Julia had a big heart as evidenced by taking Frank in and giving him a job, along with the six, or maybe it’s seven, stray dogs. She wanted someone in her life as much as I wanted my childhood sweetheart, Dante, in mine. Frank was her handyman of sorts and about the only person who could put up with her on a full-time basis. Too bad for Julia, Frank was gay. Too bad for me, my childhood sweetheart didn’t seem to be in any hurry to make our life happen. I was twenty-seven years old and tired of waiting for Dante to decide when and if we should start our life together.

  “Come in, come in, it’s too cold to be dilly dallying around outside. You can see all that from in here,” Julia said in her Baton Rouge accent, which most people confused with Texas. She had big Dallas hair which added to the confusion as to which city she was from.

  “Doesn’t my tree look beautiful?” she asked.

  I thought she meant the tree on the lawn, but she was looking over my shoulder into the double parlor off the entry hall. I turned and saw a smaller version of the ginormous one out front.

  “FRANK!” she screamed out the front door while standing next to me.

  “You will cause permanent hearing loss if you scream like that again standing so close to me,” I said.

  Julia ignored me but then yelled one decibel lower, “Frank! Come inside. You need to finish this tree in here. Leave that stuff alone out there.”

  “That,” I said, jerking a thumb toward it like a hitchhiker, “is a really big tree out there. And you have another one in here? Why? Because one skyscraper of a Christmas tree in your yard isn’t enough? How big is that thing?”

  “The ceilings in here are only fourteen-feet so this tree could only be twelve-feet,” Julia answered proudly. “The one outside is maybe fifty-feet but I can’t put ornaments outside. No one can see them at night, so I could only have lights and a star. I like to see my ornaments every year, so I put one up inside.”

  Julia inherited her deceased husband’s money—the deceased husband she was in the process of trying to divorce when he kicked the bucket. Lucky for Julia, not so lucky for him. She found a key to a storage unit with suitcases
full of cash after he died. She bought a one-hundred-year-old Victorian mansion on Canal Boulevard next to a cemetery and turned it into a bed and breakfast. She renovated it and has been having much success especially after a guest was murdered here, and the media suggested it might be haunted. We were afraid the “haunted” part would kill her business, but with the cemetery next door, it increased tenfold.

  “You really have a lot of decorations,” I said, looking around as Julia slammed the front door. It reopened as if by magic, and Frank came through it unbothered over the fact that Julia just shut it in his face.

  “Hey, Brandy, don’t stand still for too long or she’ll make me hang an ornament on you,” he said. I nodded at Frank as he climbed up the ladder to work on the tree.

  “I’m surprised Julia’s not making you wear an elf costume to decorate the house.”

  “You mean a prison elf costume, don’t you? I’m in Julia Prison. She makes me wear these jumpsuits. I guess it could be worse; they could be orange,” Frank said. He was trying to balance on top of the ladder and untangle the string of lights Julia handed him. “There’s more stuff in the boxes than there is space in this house for it.” Frank was now fighting with the lights, and the ladder began to precariously wiggle beneath him.

  I offered to help pass the lights around the tree to him.

  “Don’t start helping or she’ll drive you into the ground like she does me,” he said with an exaggerated slump of his shoulders. “Then you’ll be exhausted for tonight.” He climbed down and lowered his voice, acting as if Julia wasn’t standing right next to me and could not hear what he said, “Get out while you can.”

  I noticed Frank was pretty nimble running up and down the ladder in those pumps.

  “Don’t listen to him. He’s not in the holiday spirit,” Julia said, smiling and wearing a festive-green, low-cut sweater with black Mirabeau feathers around the scoop neck, a pencil-straight black skirt to below the knee, and black, four-inch high heeled, pumps. She offered to take my coat, and when I handed it to her, she looked my dress up and down and said, “That dress shows off your figure, but something low-cut would be sexier. Red goes well with your blonde hair for the holidays even if it is a work dress.”

  “Thank you, Julia. I think,” I said.

  “You could dress it up some with the right jewelry,” she said as her gaze took in my shoes and nails when I pulled off my gloves.

  “I thought this was the right jewelry,” I said. Frank looked at me sideways without moving his head and opened his eyes wide so only I could see him.

  “Well, I hope you have something sexier than that to wear tonight,” she said, “but not too sexy. I don’t want my new man looking at you more than me.”

  Julia was always in fashion-critique mode. Her world revolved around the right outfit, matching shoes with purse, and the proper accessories, i.e. jewelry—all the time—twenty-four seven. I believed in wearing bling when the occasion called for it. Julia was a “bling on demand” fashionista.

  “Brandy will look stunning in anything she wears tonight,” Frank said. “And she’ll have the best-looking accessory on her arm.” He was referring to Jiff and I’m sure that didn’t sit well with Julia.

  “I’m still on the clock,” I said and rubbed my hands together to warm them. The cold was slow to wear off. “I’ve got to go back to work. You know this is the busiest time of year for me.”

  “Frank, you’re bunching too many lights in one place. Get down and look at them before you have to pull them all off and do it again,” Julia said. I thought this was her way of getting even with him for the comment on what I’d be wearing.

  Frank had an audio response for everything. He let out another overwhelming sigh as he climbed down the ladder. Even though Julia called Frank a handyman, when she asked him to hang some small pictures in the hall, she had to find larger framed ones to hide the holes he made in the plaster when he missed hammering in the nails. Power tools were out of the question. He was afraid of any tool that required electricity to operate it. Julia was more of a handyman than Frank would ever be.

  “What are you doing with your hair for tonight?” Julia asked. “Are you going to have it done this afternoon?”

  “I’m going back to work, remember?” I said. “What you see is what you will get tonight, but I’ll just be in a nicer dress.”

  “I hope she wears it down and blown out like she has it now. She has beautiful, shoulder-length blonde hair, Julia. It will look nice however she does it,” Frank said in my defense. He looked at me and nodded toward Julia and said, “She’ll be wearing the Dallas hair—like it looks now—only bigger.”

  Julia ignored Frank.

  Frank’s skills ran more along the lines of interior decorator and fashion consultant. Julia also made him answer the phone, make or break her appointments, and run errands. It turned out he was also a talented seamstress who could make Julia exquisite outfits without patterns or a machine. He usually wore enough black eye makeup to look like he was a member of a heavy metal band and tonight would be no different. After all, this was a party. He was a thin, small-framed person who wore a different pair of kitten pumps with all his outfits. He had them on now, even if it wasn’t the safest footwear for climbing a ten-foot ladder. Good thing Frank was nimble.

  When he ran errands for Julia, he took his satchel—Julia and I called it a purse—and wore it New York-style across his chest. Julia would sometimes insist he wear a workman’s jumpsuit when she had him doing odd jobs like today. He purchased a Be-Dazzle-R from late night TV and used it to put his name, Franki, across the pocket of all his jumpsuits. He would remind us it was Franki with an I, no e. We both called him Frank. Julia wound up fixing things herself while Frank designed and sewed a new outfit. I desperately needed, and wanted, a Frank in my life.

  “Come talk to me in the kitchen while Frank decorates the tree,” Julia said.

  “Julia, wait. I can’t stay. I need to get back to the office and wrap up a few things today. I’ll probably even work late. I also need to finish my gift shopping and go to the grocery to get the ingredients for the rum balls I plan to make and bring to Jiff’s parents’ house for Christmas Eve next week,” I said.

  “Oh, Miss la tee da,” she teased. “You’re going to his parents’ house? The ones who live on hoity-toity Audubon Place…with their own security guard twenty-four seven on their private street?” she asked with added emphasis.

  “Yes. That is where they live,” I said. Julia put way too much emphasis on appearances and noted who had what and more of it. My stomach had knots in it from just the mention that I was going there to spend our first holiday together. A sense of dread crept up and squeezed my heart knowing I was not going to be with Dante and his family.

  “How do you get past the guard shack?” she asked. “Do they have a fingerprint or eyeball scan you have to do to be let in? How did Dante take that news?”

  I ignored her until I heard Dante’s name and came screeching back to the present as Julia barreled on, “Isn’t this the first time y’all won’t be spending your annual ten-minute allotment together on Christmas Eve before he gets called off to a homicide?” she asked. “This will be quite a change for you, won’t it, spending all of Christmas Eve together with someone?”

  She was right. Dante and I spent time together in between his homicide calls, and in New Orleans those were frequent. I was tired of him leaving me as soon as he got a call about a murder. It was a dead body for goodness sake. It wasn’t going anywhere. I was the live body he should have been paying attention to.

  “Tell Dante we all said Merry Christmas when you do see him,” Frank said, trying to squash Julia’s insensitivity. “I know you’ll see him sometime over the holidays.”

  Her comments launched memories of every Christmas since I was born spent with Dante’s family. We grew up next door to each other and our families still live side by side. Mrs. Ruth, his mom, made pralines and fudge and let us eat all we wanted. His da
d brought home a real tree, and all the boys helped him set it up and put the colored lights on it. Dante and I helped put the glass ornaments on the tree Mrs. Ruth had collected from her family and for each of her children. She had baby stockings for each of her sons with their names embroidered on them. She even had a stocking for me from the first Christmas I was brought home from the hospital. Mrs. Ruth had all boys and she adored me since she always wanted a girl. Both our families expected Dante and me to set the date every year and so did I.

  Julia rambled on, not waiting for a response from me. This was vintage Julia. “All the homes on Audubon Place are bigger than this place, and I have eight bedrooms. You better go buy some fancy desserts at a French bakery and put it on a nice holiday plate you plan to leave there. Get a nice platter from Macy’s or the Hallmark gift store. Don’t buy something cheap and plastic or you will look like you’re going to a covered-dish dinner,” she said, pointing at the tree where she wanted Frank to put more lights. Julia had a knack for making everything special you thought about doing feel ordinary.

  “Julia, give me some credit. Here’s the mistletoe—real mistletoe, not the fake stuff—you asked me to pick up if I saw any,” I said, feeling like I wanted to throw it at her. Frank gave me a big doe-eyed look of sympathy from his perch on top of a ten-foot ladder.

  “Thanks,” Julia said, taking the mistletoe and inspecting it closely to see if it met her “real vs. fake” approval. After she sniffed it to ascertain its authenticity, she continued, “Didn’t they have any that looked a bit fresher than this?”

  Frank dropped the string of lights he was wrestling with, and the sound of breaking glass got her attention, along with an icy stare from me. I’m sure Frank was making the universally known move of the finger across his throat for her to cut it out behind me.

  “Oh, this is fine. At least it’s real. I know exactly where I’m going to hang it. I think I’ll put it in the doorway to this room. That way everyone who comes to look at the tree will pass under it,” she said looking up at the doorframe we were standing closest to.