Death By Rum Balls Page 3

  “If you hang it now, I’m not going to kiss you or Frank if I walk under it,” I said in an attempt to lighten my mood, but it went totally ignored by both of them.

  “Brandy, I’ve got to work on my crown roast for tonight. You ever fix a crown roast? None of those in my gourmet cooking class knew what a crown roast was,” Julia said as she handed the mistletoe to Frank and pointed to where she wanted it hung. Then she left for the kitchen without waiting for an answer to any of her questions or thanking me for buying it for her.

  “Crown roast, crown roast, crown roast. I’m sick of hearing it. She’s all impressed with herself for having a crown roast,” Frank almost shouted it. Then he lowered his voice and crooked his finger for me to come closer. I don’t know why since he didn’t care if she heard his opinion of the crown roast.

  Frank said in his lowered voice, “I’m worried about this party. I’m worried something terrible is going to happen.”

  “I’ll be here to run interference with Julia and her thoughtless comments. You know, if she keeps bringing up Dante, I might be the one who does something terrible to her,” I said and we both smiled at our shared secrets.

  “Don’t mention any of what I told you outside. See if she tells you about the affair, the neighborhood association, or her brother and the inheritance. She invited all of them to the party.”

  “What inheritance? From her dead husband? I know about that,” I said.

  “No, her dad. He died right after Thanksgiving. She just found out about the inheritance a couple of days ago, and when her brother gets here, she’ll find out about the wife. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you about her dad,” Frank said.

  “I am, too,” I said. “Don’t worry, Frank. Pilates with the philandering husband won’t come…”

  “They’re coming,” Frank said.

  “Why in the world would she invite all of these people to her party? The bigger question is why would they come?”

  “She invited them because she doesn’t realize how insulting she is and how much they dislike her for it,” Frank said just above a whisper. “Yes, all the people I told you about have RSVP’d and said they are coming. They’ll come because they’re hoping something bad or embarrassing happens to her and they want to be here to see it. I have a bad feeling one of these people might be behind making something bad happen. I’m glad you and that hot boyfriend of yours will be here so she’ll have at least two more people watching her back besides me.

  Chapter Three

  My cell phone started ringing just as I got in my car to rush through an errand before I went back to work. It was Dante’s private number, not the precinct’s main number he called me from that usually said, NO CALLER ID. I let it go to voice mail. Dante was very intuitive when it came to murderers but had no understanding how lapses of days or weeks, let alone a month, with no communication had negative effects on women, in particular on me, the one he was supposed to be dating.

  I still got knots in my stomach when I saw Dante or heard his name and thought of what could have been. I was working very hard at moving on. Dante, on the other hand, acted like nothing had changed.

  My phone pinged and a text read Call me asap. I have five minutes before I have to get back into a meeting. Great, another snippet of my time with Dante sandwiched in between dead bodies.

  As a New Orleans homicide detective, Dante was good at his job and rose quickly through the ranks. He was recently promoted to captain and I hadn’t heard from him in weeks after his promotion. The department was always short-staffed and business was booming. New Orleans has always had a healthy crime rate, but now we were seeing crime scenes with multiple shootings and fatalities all over the news.

  He picked up on the first ring. “Brandy. Hey, I know I haven’t had time to call you for a few days…” he was saying when I cut him off.

  “Dante, it has been weeks since we last spoke. I haven’t heard from you since… since, well…it was after Halloween and before Thanksgiving,” I said, trying not to let the edge from the electric carving knife my dad uses to slice the holiday turkey slip into my voice.

  “I’ve been busy with this new job and all the additional responsibilities,” he said. When I didn’t answer or comment he asked, “How was your Thanksgiving?”

  “I spent it with Jiff and his family,” I said. Jiff Heinkel was the guy I had kissed at a parade last Mardi Gras. Dante was working the detail that night along the parade route standing right in front of us when I kissed Jiff. I started dating Jiff because I realized my life with Dante was going nowhere…fast.

  “Yeah. Um, I wanted to talk to you about Christmas. I wanted you to know that I’m in Houston all week for a meeting on a joint task force. It’s all the captains from both states and we’re trying to…”

  I could hear a loudspeaker asking attendees to return to their seats. Great, his partner Hanky had told me to hang in there because once Dante was promoted, he would have more time for us to spend together, have holidays, get married, start a family, blah, blah, blah.

  “Look, they are about to start the meeting up again and I gotta get back. I might not be back home in time for Christmas Eve this year,” he said. The loudspeaker broke in again and was more urgent in the announcement this time. He said, “I really have to go, but I’ll try to call you later,” and he hung up.

  A heavy feeling of dread filled my chest with pain and squeezed my heart until I could barely breathe when I realized I was still hanging onto Dante’s every unspoken word.

  Chapter Four

  I asked Jiff to take me to Julia’s party. We’ve been dating since Mardi Gras and exclusively since Thanksgiving. He made no secret of where he wanted our relationship to go. He’s a New Orleans gentleman and insists that I wait for him to open my car door when he drives me anywhere.

  We arrived at Julia’s house for the party and I sat waiting and waiting for the car door to be opened. When I looked over my shoulder to see what might have happened, I saw Jiff standing frozen behind the car facing Julia’s mansion looking at the Christmas decorations all over her front lawn. Even though I had been by earlier and had seen the extravaganza, I had not seen it in all of its illuminated wonder. I opened my own door and got out of the car. He was wide-eyed in disbelief at all the moving, twinkling, spinning stuff, along with the holiday music playing loudly over the outdoor speakers. His long, black cashmere coat, scarf, and leather gloves had him rather toasty while he spectated.

  I noticed he was staring at the giant spruce in the middle of the front lawn—all fifty, fabulous feet of it.

  “I think we better call Rockefeller Center and tell them where they can find their tree,” he finally said when I stood next to him. He was still staring at the tree.

  “Does all this remind you of anything?” I asked.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I left you in the car,” he said. I waved him off as no big deal. “Yes, it does remind me of something. It’s reminiscent of the guy who owned the Chicken Kings all over town. His house is what my sister and brothers wanted our house to look like,” he said. “The media called him King of Fried Chicken… and the King of Christmas Lights.”

  “Yes, and King of Neighborhood Discord. Remember when he had Entergy run additional power to his house so he could add more lights and project movies on the side of his house? You could see the glow radiating from as far away as LaPlace. He had to hire details of cops to direct traffic through his neighborhood,” I said.

  “The City of New Orleans loved him while his neighbors hated him,” Jiff said.

  “I think that’s what Julia’s neighborhood association is afraid of. They sent her a letter.”

  “Well, it’s probably a demand letter and they should give her thirty to sixty days to comply. By then, Christmas will be over and she will have taken all this stuff down. If she has any problems, tell her to call me. I’ll get an extension for her,” Jiff said. He stood still marveling at the front yard not mindful of my teeth chattering from the cold. “How
long did it take her to get this done? It must have taken an an army with ladders to put that many Christmas lights in the bushes, all over the house, and the roof. This house is a monstrosity.” He leaned into a bush to get a better look at the lights around a window. “Look at this. They must have been out here with a tape measure. The lights are all equally spaced and facing the street.”

  “I’m freezing out here,” I finally said.

  “Sorry, it’s just so, so…”

  “Over the top, like everything she does,” I said cutting him off. “You have represented Julia in the past,” I said, referring to the recent murder charge she was wrongfully arrested for, “and you still make an offer to help her with the demand letter? Don’t you remember how difficult she is?”

  Jiff is a criminal attorney with his dad’s firm, and he did me a favor representing Julia. Jiff was holding my arm with one hand as we made our way to the front door. We moved slowly, distracted by something with each step along the way.

  “Are you sure we’ve seen it all?” he asked. “Let’s stop a minute so we can make sure. I don’t want to miss anything, and I will personally warm you up when we get inside.” I loved Christmas lights and outdoor decorations, and it was wonderful to have someone who wanted to take extra time to enjoy them with me. My dad would put lights up every year on our house and I would help him. It got both of us outside of the house and away from my mother’s wacky behavior. While Jiff stood taking it all in, I tried to count the number of objects all over the front yard.

  Jiff looked around the entire front of the house and said, “This must be an obstacle course for her dogs to maneuver around when she lets them out. I don’t guess she has a back yard.”

  “You’re right, so she’s not hiding any more decorations back there.” I looked around and said, “At my house, I threw three strings of white lights in the garden and hung another around the front door. I feel so inadequate now.” More to myself than to Jiff I added, “I think my house looks pretty. When the wind blows, even a little, the light twinkles in the monkey grass.”

  “I like your house,” he said and kissed my hand. “It has you in it.”

  He always knew the exact right thing to say and he was there to say it. When he kissed my hand, it warmed me from the tips of my frozen toes all the way to my nose, rosy from the icy air.

  Julia was an equal opportunity holiday decorator. Every holiday tradition known to man in this season was represented.

  “I thought she was having a small party,” Jiff said.

  “Julia never does anything small. She said she was having a few people over to meet her new boyfriend,” I said pointing out the nativity I hid behind earlier with Frank. “That manger is the size of the shed I park my car in.”

  “She had a man with a cherry picker topping the tree with a giant star when I came by earlier,” I said. “He started on the tree as I was leaving.”

  “Of course she did,” Jiff said smiling and pulled me close to him.

  “Do you think it will freeze tonight?” I asked him. The night was not freezing by the National Weather Service standards, but by New Orleanian standards, anything that dipped below fifty degrees was cause for alarm. It was in the low forties which made everyone worry if we should trickle the water in case freezing temperatures pounced upon us. This was cold for New Orleans, and Jiff and I both had on an overcoat, a scarf, and gloves.

  “No, I don’t think it will,” he said pulling me closer. “Did you hear the news or weather saying it might?”

  “No, but I had Frank come over and wrap the exposed pipes under my house a couple of weeks ago, so I’m not worried about a freeze or a pipe bursting. We’ll be home early enough for me to run a trickle of water anyway,” I said. As soon as the mercury got anywhere near forty degrees, all of New Orleans worried about their pipes freezing. Raised cottages, like the one I lived in, were especially vulnerable but easier to repair than pipes freezing under a slab.

  “I have a better idea of what to do to warm you up. Remind me to show you when I bring you home,” he said and squeezed my hand.

  Under the gigantic Christmas tree appeared to be a village scene that looked like Santa’s workshop in the North Pole. There were lighted dolls, bikes, toy trucks, brightly papered presents, and a train big enough for a small child to ride on going around the tree on a track.

  Jiff nodded for me to look up at a Star of David among the dozen or so illuminated falling stars hanging in the large, sprawling oak limbs. “She’s covered all the bases,” he said and started to move me again to the front door. The walkway was covered in at least one hundred extension cords to power everything from Santa to dozens of spotlights on the mansion—enough to circle the globe twice.

  “This is a lawsuit waiting to happen,” he said.

  “Julia makes a lot of her own problems,” I said, thinking of the conversation Frank and I had earlier.

  He stopped and pulled me into him and gave me a kiss that took the chill of the night right off of me. Every time he kissed me it had that same effect, just like our first kiss. When our eyes met that first time during a Mardi Gras parade, he stopped dead in his tracks. He looked at me until I walked right up to him and kissed him without knowing his name. That is not uncommon during parades because the men often exchange a kiss for a flower. What was unusual was him whispering in my ear asking me to meet him at the end of the parade, and I did.

  He said, “I’m looking forward to this party and having a great time with you.”

  At the front door, two life-sized nutcrackers stood on either side of the entrance. The leaded glass doors had been festooned in holiday wreaths, lighted garland, and bells. “I don’t remember these here earlier when I stopped by,” I said. “These guys are taller than Frank. I wonder how he wrestled them out here?”

  Before we knocked, I turned to look again just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Even the mailbox had been decorated in lights with a puddle of fake snow resting on the top with “PUT LETTERS TO SANTA HERE” in peel-and-stick lettering on each side, while the pole itself was wrapped to make it look like a candy cane.

  “Look at the mailbox. Something is sticking out of it,” I said.

  “I’ll go see. Wait here. We want to make sure Santa gets all the letters.” He came back with a rectangular-shaped, gold foiled gift box wrapped only in a gold-wired ribbon. The card on it read:

  From your Secret Santa: I hope this gets you what you deserve for the holidays.

  “That’s an odd greeting on a gift,” Jiff said.

  “Let me see that,” I said and took the box away from Jiff. I pulled the gold ribbon off and handed it back to him. “Open this.” When I saw the way he was looking at me I added, “Please.”

  “Brandy, are you all right?” he asked me with his eyebrows drawn together.

  “I’m good. Please. Just open the box,” I said.

  Jiff lifted the lid on the gold foil box, while watching me while I watched the box. When he drew back the top, there was gold tissue paper hiding what was inside.

  “Just move that paper,” I said.

  “I don’t think we should be opening someone else’s…”

  I cut him off. “Lift that paper, move the paper. Just do it.” I held my breath.

  He lifted the paper to reveal a plastic airtight bag of a dozen or so rum balls.

  “Good, that’s good.” I said as I grabbed Jiff’s hand holding the gold tissue paper and put it back in the box. I took the top he had handed me and fumbled putting the snug-fitting lid back in place.

  Jiff took the box out of my hands and replaced the lid. Then he held it for me to replace the ribbon. He didn’t say a word as I pulled my gloves off to complete tying the bow. My hands shook.

  “Okay. That’s good. You think that looks good?” I asked him in rapid fire.

  “Yeah. You wanna tell me what this is about?” Jiff took the box and held my arm to lead me up the walk to the front door.

  “I will, later. Let’s enjoy thi
s party.” I shivered as a chill traveled up my legs, stopping at my shoulders and said, “We need to give that to Frank.”

  Chapter Five

  We rang the bell, arriving fashionably late by thirty minutes. I told Jiff about the neighborhood association letter, but I had not mentioned any of the other crazy stuff Frank told me earlier. I didn’t really want to tell him about the rats because, truthfully, I wanted to forget it. If he knew I thought there was something other than a gift in the gold foil box (like a dead rat), he would have tossed it in the trash. This was our first Christmas together since we met, and I wanted to enjoy this party with him. I didn’t want any of Julia’s self inflicted foolishness to spoil it. It appeared I would be spending the entire holiday with him and that suited him just fine. I had not mentioned to my family that Dante and I would not be joined at the hip and visit both families this Christmas Eve—the first Christmas Eve ever.

  Julia and her nutty problems would have to wait until after this evening if she even wanted my help with any of it.

  There was already a crowd of people inside visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows across the front porch. The double leaded glass entry doors swung open, and a man in a ten-gallon hat wearing a western bolo necktie stood there. He was easily six feet, five inches tall under the hat. He grabbed Jiff by the hand, shaking it so vigorously that Jiff’s head looked like a bobble-head doll for a second. He turned his attention to me and wrapped two big, flabby arms around me saying, “You’ve gotta be Brandy. Gimme a kiss you little filly. Any friend of Julie’s is a friend of mine. You can call me LB.”

  Julie? He called her Julie, not Julia. I wondered how that was going to play with her. And, he was wearing a hat—a rather large, hard-to-miss hat—inside. He was not wearing his manners.