*** No One Left To Burn ***
Chapter 1
5
I pulled the heavy glass door open and stepped inside.
As I did, a blast of frigid air belted me and almost made me gasp.
The outside of the building may have been colonial, but the interior was
ultra-modern. I entered a room,
which contained about thirty feet by thirty feet of vast emptiness.
Only a few bright colored chairs and magazine tables were scattered about
the room.
Secluded in one corner, almost hidden by a jungle of deep green foliage,
was an L-shaped counter about five feet high.
Over the top of the counter I could see a ruffled mass of black hair. Not
blonde, but then, you can’t win ‘em all.
Dream voice, I thought to myself.
My shoes almost disappeared into the thick mat of deep red plush carpet
when I hustled across the room. The
woman’s back was to me. I
walked up and leaned on the countertop and spoke, “Hi.
I’m Rick Stevens. I called
a little while ago about renting a car.”
When she turned to me I thought I’d shit. She was extremely cross-eyed
and her face...well, her face looked like forty miles of bad road.
Jesus, what a nightmare! She
must have weighed no less than 200 pounds. I
guessed she’d never see sixty again. She was a squatty built woman whose ass
completely covered the chair she was sitting in.
The bulk that was not supported by the chair dangled loosely over its
sides. My observation is in no way
intended to be a slam to overweight middle-aged women.
It’s just that what I saw wasn’t exactly what I had expected.
Come on Fred! What happened
to Ginger Rogers?
“Oh, no,” I mumbled. I
felt the blood might be draining from my brain.
“Hi, dawdling. Who’d ya
say ya was, mista?” She spoke the
string of words that came at me directly through her nasal passages in a strong
Ninth Ward accent. The sounds she
intoned in forming her south
“I’m Rick Stevens,” I said again.
“I called a little while ago about renting a car for the rest of the
day. The woman I spoke with said
she’d have the papers ready when I got here.”
That I had spoken with someone else when I called earlier couldn’t, by
any stretch of the imagination, be considered anything other than a normal
assumption. I continued.
“So if you could, I’m in a bit of a hurry. You see I’m...”
“What’s ya name again, mista?”
She was busy fumbling through a two-inch high stack of form papers but I
saw her eyes drift occasionally back to the opened pages of a National Enquirer.
“Let me see. Stevenson,
Stevenson,” she mumbled.
“No, not Stevenson. It’s
Stevens,” I said, trying to smile. It must have worked.
She beamed from ear to ear. But
what was that clicking I heard? Store
teeth? Yes.
Her store teeth clicked. Christ,
I thought. This is too much.
“Here ya are Mr. Smith. Let’s see now, I’ll need ya driva’s
license and...”
“Look, ma’am,” I said with a big smile that really made my dimples
show. That always worked.
“My name is Stevens not Smith.”
“Oh, yes,” she breathed, and went back through the stack of forms
again. This time she found it.
It was on top.
My ordeal with Ma Kettle was over in about ten minutes.
She finished the papers, picked up a phone, punched one button, and
without dialing, chatted briefly with the other end.
She hung up and informed me that the car was being gassed and would be
ready in about ten minutes. “Ya
can wait ova there if ya want,” she said, pointing to one of the red and blue
chairs.
“Thanks but no thanks,” I said.
“I’ll go next door and grab a cup of coffee.”
I stepped back, turned, and started toward the glass doors.
“Okey dokey, Mr. Stetson. Ten minutes.”
I looked back at her and smiled again.
“The name’s Stevenson. I
mean Smith.” Oh, hell, I thought.
“I’ll see ya later.”
It was a short walk next door but the sun was growing hotter by the
minute, and I could feel the heat through my jacket.
I quickly became aware of the rising warmth on my back and the shadowed
coolness of the lounge became a pleasant reprieve.
I walked up to the bar and straddled a stool.
A short heavy-set bartender in a crisp white shirt and wearing a vest
with a paisley design took my order. A
few minutes later he returned with a hot roll and a cup of coffee.
While I ate the roll and sipped my coffee I couldn’t help but think
what a terrible disappointment the person with the sexy voice on the phone
turned out to be in the flesh. I
just couldn’t understand how I could have been so far off.
I finished the roll and still had a few minutes so I asked for another
cup of coffee.
While I drank the coffee, I glanced through the morning paper that
someone had left on the bar next to me. It
was opened to the sports page, so that’s where I started.
I worked my way through all the sections, and when I got to the front
page, I almost spilled my coffee.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said softly.
On the bottom right side was a six-inch column with the headline New
Orleans man arrested in wife’s death. It
wasn’t the killing so much that surprised me.
Those are almost daily occurrences. It
was the person involved. According
to the article, Philip Murray was being held for giving his wife the ax -
literally.
The story said that Mr. Philip Murray had called the police after
violently killing his wife. There
had been no indications of a domestic fight and according to Murray they
hadn’t even had an argument. Mrs.
Susan Murray had been working in her flower garden when Philip walked out to
where she was kneeling and hit her with the ax he used to chop the firewood.
The reason he gave to the police for his actions was that he’d just
become aware of her several extended adulterous affairs.
Jesus Christ, I thought. I
quickly scanned the rest of the account searching for my name or a reference to
a private investigator’s report that I suspected must have triggered his
brutal attack. There was neither.
That didn’t really help the way I was feeling.
Obviously I hadn’t been a party in setting up her illicit liaisons, but
somehow I still felt partially responsible for her death.
I knew the feeling wouldn’t last because the bottom line was her
insatiable hankering for steamy interludes was what became her downfall and not
my report. If I hadn’t taken the
Murray job someone else would have, and maybe their report would have resulted
in the distraught Philip Murray whacking his wife.
Good. I almost felt better.
I had talked myself out of feeling any responsibility for Susan
Murray’s demise. Then I thought of
the other four names I’d mentioned in my report to Philip Murry.
A nervous feeling crept over me when I wondered about their well being.
Had he done them in as well?
I walked over to the pay phone hanging on the wall next to beer sign that
showed three frogs sitting on lily pads talking.
“Bud-weis-er.” I looked
at the sign while I fished a quarter out of a handful of change I held.
I called my friend Bill Brass at the NOPD, and while the phone was
ringing, I looked at the frogs again. The
third ring convinced me that I should have gone to work for an advertising
agency. I know I could have come up
with something that good, for Chrissake.
“Good morning, Bill,” I said, when he answered. “This is Rick.
I called to talk to you about the Murray item in today’s Picayune.
I think...” He didn’t let me finish.
He’s sometimes like that.
“Rick,” he said. “Glad
you called. Listen to this.
I just heard it. You’ll get
a bang out of this one.” He
scarcely paused to take a breath and then he continued.
“Do you know why, when they first started naming hurricanes, they named
them after women?”
“No, I don’t, Bill, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell
me.”
“They named hurricanes after women because when they come they’re wet
and wild and when they go they take the house, the car, and all your money.”
Bill busted out laughing and I could visualize him slapping his leg in
exuberant self-indulgence.
It sounded a bit familiar, but I laughed with him anyway.
The way I was feeling it certainly couldn’t hurt anything.
“That’s a good one, Bill,” I said, with a chuckle.
“I’ll try to remember it. Hey,
what I called about was the Murray killing.”
We talked for about ten minutes but he mostly just listened.
I told him about the job I’d done for Philip Murray and the report
I’d sent to him. Then I told Bill
the names of the four men who were involved and named in my report to Murray.
I wouldn’t normally do that because of confidentiality, but I knew the
information was safe with Bill. Besides,
he had to send someone to check and see if Murray had whacked any of them before
he did his wife.
What was left of my coffee got cold while I was talking to Bill, so I
paid my check and left.
When I stepped back into the waiting room of Southern Limousine
everything seemed to be as it had been twenty minutes or so before.
Suddenly I knew there was something different.
The entire room, every crack and crevice, was drenched by the fresh,
elegant fragrance of lilacs. At
first I kind of grooved on it, being a lilac freak, but as I walked back toward
the desk it got much stronger until, finally, it was to the point of being
overpowering. I didn’t see
anyone at the desk. I leaned
forward on the counter, and was startled to see, bobbing there about two feet
above the floor, the head of a woman. Not
just any head. My gaze continued to
drift over the form on the floor before me, and I realized that the head
attached to it could belong to only one person.
“Dream Voice,” I murmured. I
didn’t mean to say it. It just
came out. She turned and looked up,
and I knew there was no doubt about it.
“Hi,” she said, with a sheepish look on her face.
“I spilled my perfume. I’ll
be right with you.” She was on all
fours, feverishly wiping the carpet, and I can tell you this, her blouse was
definitely cut too low for the position she was in.
“Here, let me help,” I said chivalrously.
I stepped around the end of the counter, traveling at a pretty fast clip.
My hands were busy squaring away my tie, which is a short routine that
men often perform when they’re about to meet someone, especially a woman, for
the first time. Seldom are they
found to be crooked, but must be checked for proper geometric alignment
nonetheless. An open fly, no
problem. But an askew cravat, tisk,
tisk. Must be some G.Q. thing.
Anyway, I let my right leg bump against what I thought was a two-way gate
at the end of the counter to open it. It
didn’t open. It was a one-way gate
and it opened out not in. My feet
went straight up from behind me and over my head.
I did one prize-winning somersault and lit square on my ass in the middle
of the pool of lilac juice.
“My, my,” she said. “You
certainly do jump right into your work, don’t you?”
Then she laughed.
I felt like a jerk, and why not? I
needed something to say quick. I
coyly asked, “Do you affect all men like this?”
“Heavens, no,” she responded with a wave of her hand.
“Why only an hour ago a man came in and didn’t even give me a tumble.
Well, not like the tumble you just gave me.”
“He must have been blind.”
“No, he wasn’t blind. But
he was about ninety years old.” She
gave another deep, throaty laugh, which came out from between full, ripe lips,
which were crimson and glossy. They
were a striking contrast with her even, white teeth.
Her hair was strawberry blonde, shoulder length, and parted in the
middle. She wore it with a little
curl on each side of the part, which accented her beautiful oval-shaped face.
The buttons on her blue silk blouse were seriously strained from the
formidable pressure within. Each
time she breathed I blinked as if something had been thrown at me, like an old
three-dimensional movie. Some
jugs! Better than a 3- D roller
coaster ride by a ton.
Her long, slender legs were curled beneath her and even though only her
ankles showed, that was enough. The
way her clothes hugged her body, I knew she was straight out of Playboy.
“Oh, dear,” she cried laughingly.
“You’re sitting in the perfume. You’ll
ruin your clothes.”
“Hell,” I laughed, as I wiggled my fanny some more.
“I said I’d help wipe it up didn’t I?”
Her green eyes danced as she laughed and I laughed with her.
Christ, I was having a great time. A-sitting
and a-wiping and a-laughing and a-looking at those jugs!
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