“Wouldn’t you like to go on a ship sometimes?” she asked dreamily.
“No, I like it here,” Moran said. He was sipping Dewars from a leaded crystal glass and thinking about pouring it on the head of a drunk three flights down who was taunting pedestrians with meaningless insults.
“I mean a trip for fun, like to the Caymans or Jamaica. It would be nice to get away.”
He shrugged. Lately, anywhere but the French Quarter, Max felt strangely nervous, but he didn’t want his partner to know about that.
“Do you know Ava Shoemaker?” he asked to change the subject. “She runs a flower shop over on Dauphine.”
“No. Why?” It wasn’t exactly true that Lana got jealous whenever Max mentioned another female. She had eight of the most exotic, educated, and desired women in the Southern U.S.A. in her employ downstairs, but she could usually keep tabs on their rovings. It was only when Lana heard a new name that her ears perked up.
“Oh, just a problem Johnny Lepeyere and Melvin Dubuisson brought in,” Moran replied vaguely.
“Lumpy Dubuisson? I once voted for his father when he ran for sheriff. Fix me a drink, Max.”
“I never heard Melvin called Lumpy.” He took her glass and moved off toward the small rooftop bar with its four tall stools.
“I think it was when he played sports in high school at McDonough 13 or something,” she said, following him.
The sounds of a calliope floated high above the dormers and balconies of the Quarter from a steamboat pushing out into the current.
“Her father got drowned, you know,” Max told her. “He was pulled out of the water right about there.” Moran pointed behind him to a distant spot now awash in the wake of the cruise ship.
“I don’t remember hearing about it,” Lana said, “but I see that look in your eye.”
“What look?”
“You’re interested.” She watched his reflection in her glass.
“It doesn’t seem right,” Max said. “He used to make beautiful flower arrangements when we needed them for the club, day or night.”
“So now you want to solve his murder?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Sure.” She knew what could happen if Max got interested in something. “The girl, is she pretty?”
“Old and ugly as a bat,” he assured her, and he shut her up by handing her a fresh glass and massaging her neck.
Still, Moran wandered back to the flower shop the next day.
Ava offered him a bunch of old ledgers and checkbooks to look through. Seated on a folding chair beside a Mary Rose, he perused these with one eye while watching her work with the other.
Between customers, he learned that Ava had been studying zoology, with an emphasis on frogs, before she left school. It was not an avocation for which she had found a practical use. She asked Max if he had always known so much about flowers.
“I used to have a problem with drugs,” he told her honestly. “When I gave them up, I gave myself smells as a reward. It’s a mind thing.”
“Isn’t everything?” she asked.
“No. Some things are real.”
In silence, she clipped dead sprigs off a rose.
“My father’s death was real,” she said eventually. “He was in the water for three days, and the only way I could identify him was by his wedding ring. My own dad.” She was crying softly. “He was a sweet man who didn’t bother people. He went to Mass at Cathedral every day and never even complained about the brass bands playing for the tourists outside.”
“That is sad,” Moran said. “Why would somebody kill him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he saw something.”
Moran, idly flipping though the yellow papers, thought he saw something.
The hoods were back.
“I’ve looked into your situation,” Moran told them. “I’ll make one observation, which is that it seems to me that neither one of you is performing any actual service for the Shoemaker girl.”
“Why, I sure am,” Lepeyere said. “She ain’t had no trouble with any City health inspectors, has she? Big Eddie ain’t been around, has he?”
“She’s got a delivery van double-parked in front of her shop every time I go past,” Dubuisson protested. “You never seen a parking ticket on it. Wonder why!”
“Well, I don’t intend to upset your traditions,” Moran said. “We’ve all got to make a living and the world’s got to keep turning around. Melvin, the account is yours. Johnny, you’re out of luck and should stay away from that particular flower shop.”
Dubuisson grinned and popped his suspenders.
“That ain’t fair!” Johnny Lepeyere shouted, half rising from his chair. “Give me one simple reason why you’re taking his word over mine!” Moran gave him his fish stare, and Lepeyere settled back into his seat.
“The simple reason, Johnny, is that the girl’s father always paid Melvin’s father. I know this because the ledgers say so.”
He handed Lepeyere a piece of paper. “Right below where it says ‘Flower Pots, $80,’ it says, ‘Lump, $100.’ Am I right?”
“Yeah?” Lepeyere agreed.
“That’s my pop, and they call me Lumpy, too,” Dubuisson cried happily. “And one hundred dollars a week is just about right.”
“So it seems to me,” Moran concluded, “the Shoemakers are in Melvin’s parish, so to speak.”
Much satisfied, Dubuisson jumped up and shook Moran’s hand vigorously.
“That ain’t exactly proof!” Lepeyere shouted. “‘Lump’ could mean crabmeat. It could mean anything.”
Moran shook his fingers free. “I say it’s proof, and that will end the disagreement. And somebody killed her old man, you know. It wasn’t you, Johnny, was it?”
“Of course not.” Lepeyere was on his feet, too.
“Wasn’t me, either,” Dubuisson chimed in, but Max ignored him.
“Well, I’ve taken an interest in her and what happened to her old man. You understand me, Johnny?”
Lepeyere glared back at Moran, but then remembered himself and doused the fire in his eyes.
“You’re barking up the wrong lamppost, Mr. Max, but you have my respect, as always.” He bobbed his head one-fourth of an inch, the hint of a bow.
“Help yourselves to a drink at the bar on your way out,” Moran said, showing them the door. “It’s on the house.”
He watched them walk down the hallway. They both seemed to be in a hurry to get away and skipped the drink.
There was something about the Shoemaker girl Moran liked. It wasn’t right, killing a man who made flower arrangements for a living, who sent wreaths to Max Moran. He would see about it. Old Oscar’s papers held other clues.
And one of them was an entry near the end that said, “Delivery to Witch’s Hat, 8 P.M.” The Witch was as close to the river as you could get without getting wet, and Johnny Lepeyere, well... It was something to think about. What might Oscar have seen?
Copyright © 2006 Tony Dunbar
No Neutral Ground
by Sarah Shankman
The author of the Samantha Adams mystery series as well as the Louisiana-based novel Keeping Secrets, Sarah Shankman grew up in small-town north-eastern Louisiana — what she calls the no-dancing, no-drinking, no-fun part of the state. “I treasure my time in NOLA in the late ‘60s,” she says, “as part of the founding staff of New Orleans magazine.” She visits the city often, and is at work on a kids’ adventure novel.