“Why?”
“I’ve got a call. Possible homicide.”
Celia got out, closed the door, and trotted alongside, asking through the open window, “Who was killed?”
He didn’t want to alarm her—and besides, he still hadn’t confirmed the identity of the victim—so he didn’t answer. “I don’t know how I’ll get out of here,” he said instead. His siren and lights were already on for the parade, so there was nothing he could do to let the crowds know he had a real emergency.
“Stan?” Celia asked again. “Who is it?”
“I don’t know yet,” he shouted over the noise. “Get back now. I have to find a way through.”
Celia fell back, and he tried to inch his way to the side of the road—but there were people crowding the roadside. Up ahead, one of the motorcycle cops had heard the call and was turning his bike around and ordering people out of the way. He yelled something to the other cops in the parade, who stopped their parade maneuvers and skirted the side of the parade up to where the firemen clowned.
Up ahead, Stan saw the fire truck pull out of the line and make a path through the crowd toward an intersection that wasn’t on the parade route. He wondered if anyone who’d heard the call had told George Broussard yet.
He picked up the radio mike and told the dispatcher he was on his way. As he inched his way through the crowd to the next intersection, where he could escape the parade route, he saw George Broussard standing stock-still in the middle of the parade, his face painted in a surreal smile and his belly poking out from under his shirt with a face painted on it. One of the cops straddled his bike next to George, shouting into his ear, breaking the news. George’s face went slack as he reached up and pulled off the foil wig he wore, then spotted Stan in the approaching squad car and launched toward him.
The music played on, festive and upbeat, as the distraught fireman reached Stan’s squad car and dove into the passenger seat. “My wife!” he cried.
“We’re on our way, buddy,” Stan said. Finally reaching the intersection, he stomped the accelerator.
At the Midtown Station, Nick Foster, Dan Nichols, and Junior Reynolds pulled the pumper out of its stall and raced to the address the dispatcher had given them. Something about Martha Broussard-had the dispatcher said she’d been shot?
Nick pulled on his oxygen tank and set the mask over his head as the truck approached the Broussard house. As the truck slowed and he leaped off, he prayed that Martha Broussard wasn’t this year’s first casualty of Fat Tuesday.
Chapter Four
The fire at the Broussard house had been small; the crew on duty had put it out quickly. In no time, the modest home had been converted into a crime scene. Yellow tape cordoned off the yard and the street for a block in either direction, and a handful of cops in clownwear came and went from the front door, most with smeared paint on their faces, since none had taken the time to remove it.
Mark Branning, still dressed in his flapper fringe and baggy ruffled pants, stood back among the firemen awaiting further instructions. None of the usual post-fire policies could be observed, since the blaze was connected with a shooting. The police department was in charge now.
Nick, who’d been one of the first firefighters to reach the scene, had told him that Martha Broussard had been found in the fire with a head wound from a gunshot. Two paramedics were still in the backyard—saving her life, Mark hoped, but as time passed and they didn’t rush her out to the ambulance to be helicoptered to the hospital in Slidell, his fears rose that the news wasn’t good.
The faces were sober as cops and crime photographers came and went from the house. The air was charged with smoke and apprehension.
“She’s dead, don’t you think?” Ray Ford asked him in a dull monotone.
Mark shook his head in sympathy. “Poor George. Who could have done this?”
“Could be anybody,” Ray said. “We don’t really know them that well.”
That was true. The Broussards had lived in Newpointe for only a year. George had grown up here, but had lived in Monroe for most of his adult life. They had moved back to be closer to his aging parents. The fire department had accepted George’s experience with wide-open arms, making him a shift captain. They had seemed like nice people—kept their yard neat, went to church, minded their own business…
But this murder changed everything.
“You don’t think they was runnin’ from somethin’ when they come here, do you?” Ray asked him.
Mark glanced at him, surprised. “I thought Susan and Martha were friends. Wouldn’t she know?”
“She thought the world of Martha. Loves that baby. She gon’ be sick.”
Mark stared back up at the house as Stan came out the front door, got behind the wheel of the car he’d driven in the parade, and radioed something in. The baby’s cries grew louder, and Mark looked back at the front door. George stood in the foyer with that stupid clown shirt hanging open, his burly chest and the face on his belly exposed as he stared into space.
Mark wondered if Allie would be frightened when she learned that there was a killer on the loose. He thought of asking Stan if Martha was, indeed, dead, and if they knew who did it. But Stan was busy.
“I still say they was runnin’ from somethin’,” Ray Ford muttered. “George’s got some enemy did this. Maybe a gamblin’ debt.”
“Does George gamble?”
“I don’t know. But it makes sense.”
Mark glared at the black man who was one of his closest friends. “Anybody ever tell you you watch too many movies? You don’t even know if the man gambles, and you’re convinced that his wife was murdered because of a gambling debt. If you leave here and tell anybody that, so help me, I’ll strangle you.”
Ray looked offended. “I ain’t no gossip, Mark. I’m just sayin’—it looks a little suspicious.”
“Hey—maybe George did it,” Mark muttered sarcastically.
Ray’s eyebrows shot up. “No! You don’t think—”
Mark rolled his eyes. “Stop speculating, Ray. The man’s wife was killed. That doesn’t make him a gambler or a murderer, and it doesn’t mean he was in the Witness Protection Program, and it doesn’t mean he’s an underworld spy. It’s Fat Tuesday, and bad things always happen on Fat Tuesday. Leave it at that and let the cops do the detective work.”
Ray bristled and ambled back to the fire truck.
Chapter Five
Allie Branning put the finishing touches on the last purple Mardi Gras centerpiece she had made for the Krewe of Janus Ball tonight at the Newpointe High School gym. Sweeping her blonde hair behind one ear, she checked her list to see which hospital arrangements she needed to do first. She couldn’t make any deliveries until after the parade, because it cut through the center of town, making it impossible to get from her little flower shop, Blooms ’n’ Blossoms, to the tiny noncritical care hospital on the other side of town. At least she could take consolation in the fact that the steady stream of customers she’d had yesterday had stopped, if only for the duration of the parade.
The bell attached to the front door clanged as someone came in, and she peered from the back room to the front. It was Jill Clark, her closest friend. “Come on back, Jill,” she called. “I’ve got a ton of things to do. These Mardi Gras parties are killing me.
“Enjoy it and just make a killing,” Jill said, purloining one of the peppermint sticks that Allie kept in a container beside the cash register. Peeling off the wrapping, she stuck the tip in her mouth and strolled to the back room. The candy gave her a youthful, pixie look that belied the fact that she was the most respected attorney in town. “You know, I think you’re the only business in all of Newpointe that’s open today,” Jill said.
Jill was wearing jeans and tennis shoes rather than the usual dark suit that seemed to be her dress code in the courtroom. Her short brown hair looked more relaxed and less polished than usual.
“Did you take off today?” Allie asked.
“
Well, not really, but when no one made any appointments and court wasn’t even in session, I figured I might as well kick back and take it easy. You want to have lunch?”
“Can’t,” Allie said. “Too many deliveries to make after the parade is over, and no help. I’ve called every part-timer who’s ever worked for me, and they all considered it cruel and unusual punishment to make them work on Fat Tuesday. Last year, I had Mark to help me. But things were different then: Pat Castor didn’t force the firemen to observe this oh-so-solemn religious holiday, and we weren’t in the middle of a divorce—”
“Divorce?” Jill took the peppermint from her mouth. “Allie, you said that wasn’t an option, that you didn’t believe in divorce.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve decided that it believes in me,” she said, clipping the flower stems with a vengeance in the sinkful of water. “I have biblical grounds.”
“What biblical grounds?”
“Adultery.”
Jill stepped up to the table where Allie stood and touched her wet hands, stopping her work. Allie met her eyes.
“Allie, I know you. Biblical grounds or not—adultery or not—divorce will make your life worse, not better.”
Allie held her gaze for several moments. Outside the shop, she heard the upbeat music of the parade passing by, children shouting and revelers laughing. She wondered if Mark was at the beginning of the procession or the end—and if he’d even give her a second thought as he passed the business they had built together.
“What choice do I have?” she asked Jill. “What am I supposed to do? There haven’t been any grand gestures or any noble attempts to reconcile.”
“From you or him,” Jill pointed out.
“I’m the one who was wronged.”
“You aren’t even sure about that, Allie.”
“Oh, I’m sure, all right. Jill, the ball’s in his court, and he’s not going to play it.”
“Do you really want him to play it?”
“I don’t know.” She smiled sadly. “Maybe I just want to ram him in the head with it.”
“He’s a stubborn man,” Jill conceded. “But I don’t really think you want to lose him.”
“I have already.” Allie picked up a long-stemmed rose and tapped the white petals against her lips. They’d had white roses shaped in a cross as the centerpiece of their wedding, when they’d vowed to love each other until death. The death of what, she wondered now. “Problems can be worked out, but when your husband just stops loving you…”
Jill took the rose out of Allie’s hand. “See, I don’t think he really has stopped loving you. Not entirely. It’s a miserable, unhappy man that I see walking around town these days. He covers it with jokes and barbs, and all that Branning sarcasm and charm, but there’s a lot of pain in his eyes.”
“He’s not proud of our failure,” Allie said. “Neither am I.”
“Then don’t fail.”
Allie met her friend’s steady, pull-no-punches gaze. Jill would never change.
The front door jingled again as someone came in. “Allie, are you here?”
Allie and Jill came out from the back room and saw Celia standing at the door, perspiring as if she had just run two miles, and gasping to catch her breath. Outside, the jazz of the parade mixed with jubilant shouts and motorcycle engines and horns honking. “Celia, what is it?”
“There’s been a murder,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “They’re saying it’s Martha Broussard.”
Allie’s eyes widened. “Really?”
Celia went to the small water tank and filled a paper cup with water. She took a drink, then tried to go on again. “The whole crew left. Cops, firemen, paramedics. The parade was gutted.”
Allie looked at Jill, then back at Celia. “Celia, are you sure?”
“No,” Celia admitted, “not about who the victim was. But Ray Ford told Susan that the call had been to the Broussard address, and that Martha had a gunshot wound. I’m telling you, it gets worse every year. I just hope Stan can figure out who did it before the creep gets away. All we need is to have a killer loose on the night of Fat Tuesday.”
“Poor Martha,” Allie whispered. “I can’t imagine…” She looked at the other two women. “Did either of you know her very well?”
Celia shook her head. “I kept meaning to have them over.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Allie said. “But with Mark and me separated…”
“Maybe it’s not too late. I’ll hear from Stan as soon as he gets back to the station,” Celia said. “Maybe she’s still alive. You know how news can get distorted in this town.”
A while later, Allie tuned to the Newpointe radio station as she returned from her deliveries. Details about the shooting were sketchy, but the announcer seemed certain that Martha had been murdered, that there were no leads on the killer, and that someone with a gun and a heart to kill was still roaming the streets. Allie drove back from the high school gym by rote, down Second Street, then right on Jacquard to Bonaparte. The parade was over, and broken beer bottles, cigarette butts, plastic cups, and confetti of every shape and color lined the streets. She pulled into the parking lot in front of Blooms ’n’ Blossoms, turned off the van’s ignition, and sat there for a moment.
She had never been one to enjoy being alone, and this murder wouldn’t make things easier. As it was, she had trouble sleeping nights. Every creak in their old house, every whistle of the wind, every car that drove by woke her.
Tonight she’d probably be up all night, listening for killers.
Summoning the numbness that had anesthetized her for the past two months, she got out of the van and hurried in, tied her apron back on, and began to furiously design the last of the arrangements that had been ordered. If she could just keep busy, keep her hands working and her mind racing, keep her schedule full and hours packed, she wouldn’t have to let the horror of the news sink in. She would finish the arrangements, make the deliveries, then come back and clean up here. The floor in the front of the shop needed mopping, and it was time to clean the bathroom, even though no one but employees ever used it. And those curtains in the windows were getting dusty. She should wash them tonight, then iron them and hang them back up. There was so much to do that it would be hours before she stopped hurrying and settled into the quiet. After that, maybe she’d be exhausted enough to sleep.
The telephone rang, startling her; she knocked a glass vase off her work table, and it shattered all over the floor. She stood still, staring down at the sharp fragments as if they formed a picture of her life blowing apart.
She made no move to answer the phone. She couldn’t talk right now, not about Martha or George, not about murders or marriages, not even about parades or flowers.
Eventually, the phone stopped ringing, but she remained frozen. I’ve got to move, she told herself. Got to keep busy. No time to think.
But she couldn’t move, couldn’t organize her thoughts enough to clean up the glass or find another vase or arrange the flowers.
She heard the bell on the front door as someone came in, and she wished she had put the “Closed” sign out and locked the door behind her.
“Allie?”
Mark’s voice startled her again, but there was nothing nearby to knock over.
“Allie, are you in back?”
“Here,” she said, surprised at how hollow her voice sounded. “I’m here.”
He came into the doorway.
“Stop!” she said. “You’ll step on the glass. I broke a vase.”
He looked down at the pieces all around her feet. She realized it must look odd to him, the way she just stood there, not making any attempt to clean it up, but she still couldn’t manage to make herself move. “I…have so many deliveries to make. So many arrangements still…and now this.”
She realized how absurd it sounded, as if in the course of her busy day a broken vase rated higher than a murder.
She made herself look at him, at the redness in
his eyes and the remnants of white face paint around the edges of his unshaven face. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a pullover golf shirt. Despite the paint, he looked good-as good as he had when she’d first met him. And he stood silently looking at her, as if he had something to say but couldn’t find the words. Looking away from those eyes that seemed to see straight into her, she tried to make a list. Get broom, sweep up glass, finish the arrangement, load the van…
As if he sensed her distress, he got the broom and the dustpan and began to sweep up the glass. She stayed where she was, watching him empty the dustpan into the trash, then come back for a second round of sweeping. “There,” he said quietly. “No harm done.”
She nodded like a robot. “Thank you.”
He regarded her carefully. “You heard about Martha Broussard, didn’t you?”
She nodded again. “How is George?”
“Not too good. You’re not either, are you?”
She felt her face flushing and reached for another vase. “All this business about murder,” she said. “It’s just shaken me a little.”
“I thought you might be afraid.” He got the vase and held it under the sink, filled it halfway with water. He set it back down in front of her.
She began to stick the flowers in the vase, with no regard for color or symmetry.
She looked down at her watch, but the time didn’t register. “I have to get back to the high school. They’re already decorating for the Krewe of Janus Ball. I’ve taken one load over there already. They’re probably waiting.”
“I thought you’d decided not to sell to them. Idol worship, you said, since Janus was a mythical god and all.”
She might have known that he’d throw her words back in her face. “I had to do it anyway,” she said. “I needed the money. It’s not easy maintaining two households. You said you were going to boycott Mardi Gras,” she told him. “Guess neither of us is too good at following our convictions.”
“Or keeping our commitments.”