Goes Down Easy

Burrowing into his hooded sweatshirt, Jack headed for the building’s courtyard. He jogged up the stairs to the small eatery’s second floor, hoping it wasn’t busy, not in the mood for a crowd.

Too much noise interfered with his ability to process information, to analyze, to reason, to think—which was why he and special ops had made such a good fit for eight of his twelve years in the Marines. The missions he had run required secrecy, and communication was often accomplished with hand signals and nothing more.

When hitting a dead end like this one, however, he doubted even total silence would help. What he needed was a sign. But first he needed a sandwich.

At the counter, behind which was painted a mural of a swaggering swashbuckler, Jack ordered a bowl of gumbo and half a muffuletta. When in Rome, and all that. He took a seat at a table decorated with a purple, green and gold Mardi Gras tablecloth and picked up a copy of the Times-Picayune.

He scanned the front page, listening to the smoky jazz playing from the café’s corner speakers—God, he loved jazz—sipping at a hot chicory coffee blend, the warmth of the mug thawing his fingers and doing a good job of heating up the iceberg in his gut. He was not cut out for the cold.

He’d lived most of his life in Texas for that very reason. His three tours of duty were the only years he’d spent away from the Lone Star State. Bring on the heat and humidity; that was his motto. Even the mosquitoes and the ragweed couldn’t drive him away.

Nothing in his life had prepared him for what he’d suffered during his years in special ops—the lack of food, of sleep, of shelter, often of contact with another soul whose native tongue was the same as his. And weather so hot and humid, the air so heavy with moisture that there were days that just breathing had been hard work.

Ending his trip down weather lane, he turned to page two, eating as he skimmed the paper. The coffee was hot and biting, the gumbo steaming with spicy sausage and the tang of tomatoes, okra and bay leaf. At this rate he might dig in and stay for awhile.

Sounded a lot more appealing than admitting he’d screwed up somewhere, and that the job he’d taken at the request of the Eckhardt family was quickly heading down the tubes. He’d been surprised when Becca Nelson, the University of Texas coed who ran his Austin-based private investigation business between classes from her Blackberry, had told him of Cindy Eckhardt’s call.

He had a reputation for finding people who didn’t want to be found. The sixteen-year-old Dallas trust funder who’d wanted to play in a rock ’n’ roll band. The bride from Fort Worth who’d changed her mind on the way to the church. Most recently, the San Antonio bank executive who’d left his position in the midst of a midlife crisis, taking a new name—and a whole lot of his employer’s money with him.

Jack owed much of the notoriety to Becca. She was in the fifth year of her four-year degree plan, having spent thirty-six months working her way around the world before starting school at twenty-one. Since hiring on five years ago when he’d first set up shop, answering an ad he’d placed in the UT newspaper the Daily Texan, she’d made it her mission to get his name out there in an effort to ensure job security.

Hers.

She’d had no problem with the fact that he ran his business out of his SUV, and had taken over converting him to a rolling electronic wonder, crawling around with a tool belt bigger than she was, outfitting the Yukon’s dashboard to resemble a Black Hawk cockpit.

She’d set up the meeting with the Eckhardt family, flooded his PDA with scanned clippings and e-mailed him online stories. Seemed Cindy and Dayton had been loading the car New Year’s morning, heading for the airport and an Aspen vacation, when the kidnapping went down.

With Dayton outside, Cindy had made one last trip into their Hyde Park home, coming out less than ten minutes later to find Dayton gone, the doors of his Lexus wide open, suitcases strewn about.

The police had taken one look at the obvious signs of a struggle, interviewed witnesses who’d seen two masked men in a black Jeep without plates and put out an APB.

Enough of the crime’s details had been in the news that Jack wasn’t surprised things had begun going south. The kidnappers had only to flip on a local broadcast and hear everything the media proclaimed the public had a right to know.

Screw that. Dayton Eckhardt wasn’t the public’s husband or father. No one but the Eckhardt family, the Austin PD and the FBI had a right to anything. And, the way he saw it, in that order—the very reason he checked in with Cindy every few hours, new news or not.

Unfortunately, so many of the particulars had been leaked that the kidnappers were no longer even a blip on the radar. If anything, they were burrowed deep underground. Three days and counting, the police were down to zero leads and were still waiting for a ransom demand. Jack had lucked out with the New Orleans connection—especially since the feds had turned up nothing much in Louisiana beyond rumors that a psychic was involved.

Dayton Eckhardt had started Eckton Computing in the Big Easy before market conditions—property taxes, salaries, the value of a square foot of warehouse space—had sent the start-up to Austin a year ago. Eckhardt had left behind more than a few disgruntled employees—not to mention, rumor had it, Dayton’s disgruntled mistress.

One of the ex-employees Jack had interviewed thought she’d seen Dayton at a Christmas party in the Quarter. That made no sense, but it was the only scrap Jack had, and he held on tight. There had been no activity on Dayton’s cell phone since the kidnapping, and none on his personal or corporate e-mail accounts. At least nothing outgoing. There had been plenty of incoming, and most of it junk. Even that had been analyzed by the Eckton tech working with the Austin PD. So far, nothing but ads for erectile dysfunction meds and spam mail promising live sex via webcams.

Jack was more into having fun with the real thing. Or he would be, one of these days. When he found the time. When he found the woman. When he found a reason to look for either instead of spending his time looking for strangers who’d vanished without a trace. Instead of looking to find himself.

His life had been in flux for a while, the transition from special ops to civilian PI tougher than he’d anticipated. Six years ago at his fifteenth high school reunion, after catching up with his friends who’d made up “the deck”—he’d been the jack, Quentin the queen, Heidi the joker, Ben the ace, Randy the king—fitting back into real life had seemed a doable prospect.

The three-day reunion had been a hell of a party. He’d stood onstage at The Cave Down Below—the warehouse club booked for that Friday night—looked out at the four friends who’d been his high school anchors and choked himself up, barely recovering before belting out Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.”

He remembered sitting on a picnic table next to Heidi the next day, and telling her about not wanting to hit eighty and wonder how he got there. Or what happened during the years in between.

And even though he’d been tired of traveling the world, he hadn’t been quite ready to settle down. He’d continued to drift for a couple of years after the reunion, living on the road and out of his duffel bag for the full tour that he’d fronted for Diamond Jack, the band he’d put together once his discharge had come through.

Music had been a huge part of his life for as long as he could remember. His days playing bass in “the deck’s” high school ensemble had been one of the best times of his life. He’d learned about belonging. About true friendships and human nature, about faults and flaws and royally freaking things up—which was exactly what he’d done after graduation.

And here he’d gone and done the same thing now. No, dude. You didn’t. You’re just stuck with the big stinkin’ pile of crap left by everyone who worked this case before you. Telling himself that was a whole lot easier than buying it as the truth.

Truth held position number one at the top of Jack’s culpability barometer. And not the ask-me-no-questions-and-I’ll-tell-you-no-lies sort of honesty he’d witnessed too often, but balls-to-the-wall-or-die.

If knowledge was power, then truth was omnipotence…and was why Jack nearly sputtered gumbo across the newspaper when he flipped to page fifteen, and the headline halfway down leaped out.

Psychic Della Brazille to consult on Eckhardt kidnapping

What the hell?

Oh no. This wasn’t happening. He wasn’t having his case all mucked up by a scammer out to fleece a family already on the edge. After the hurt he’d seen during his years in special ops, the anger, the pain—and having to learn to live with it all—there was no way he’d let anyone latch on like a leech to his case.

Especially not a con artist more interested in fifteen minutes of fame than anything resembling reality—or truth.

PERRY BRAZILLE GROANED at the headline, thankful the story had been buried on page fifteen rather than splashed across page one. Della so did not need to see this newest mention connecting her to the case. The stress she was under was already making her sick.

She’d been bombarded by the media, by former employees of Eckton Computing, by the Eckhardt family—all of them seeking answers she didn’t have to give. But the biggest stress came from the visions themselves. Visions which had started weeks ago and plagued her ever since.

That was how it had been with Della from the beginning, Perry mused, hiking up her calf-length skirt’s yards of navy twill and climbing onto the stool behind the counter in Sugar Blues. Her aunt never saw things in her dreams, or as gentle imaginings.

What she saw instead came as flashes. Harsh and jolting. Migraine-inducing. Blasts of intense color and heat and dizzying sound, each flash more draining, more agonizing than the last. It was an affliction which she’d suffered all of her life.

Della was, in fact, upstairs sleeping after hours of excruciating pain. And Perry intended to see that her aunt—her last living relative, the woman who, though only eighteen years older, had been Perry’s mother for most of her life—slept as long as she needed to.

That was why she was at the shop’s counter now. Della had three appointments for evening readings that needed to be rescheduled. Two were with old clients who would hate the delay but, being devoted to Della, would totally understand.

The third appointment was with Claire Braden who was new to Sugar Blues and the world of psychic readings. Claire was one of Perry’s neighbors at Court du Chaud. The “hot” court had been christened as such when occupied by Captain Gabriel Dampier, now the resident ghost.

Longtime occupants of Court du Chaud were well-versed in the legend of the pirate and his band. Perry had never seen him herself, but both Tally and Bree Addison, the twins living in numbers one and one-and-a-half, had shared stories of their sightings.

Perry’s experience was with a ghost of a different color—a blues singer named Sugar Babin who’d fallen (some said been pushed) to her death down the stairs of the very building that served as Della’s place of business, and had been her home for all of her life. It had been Perry’s, too, for many years.

At least Sugar only haunted the stairwell between the bottom step and the top, singing of love gone wrong in her smoky Nina Simone-like voice. And here Perry had always hoped there would be no PMS in the afterlife.

She dialed Claire’s office number, and when the other woman picked up, said, “Hey, it’s me. Della’s not feeling well, so I’m going to have to reschedule you, okay?”

“Of course it’s okay. Wait, no. Don’t reschedule. Just cancel. This reading was all your idea anyway, remember?”

Using the appointment book’s pen with the cobalt blue feather, Perry drew a line of tiny X’s through Claire’s name, thinking of another of their Court du Chaud neighbors, Tally Addison, who’d recently come to Sugar Blues seeking help. “It was a suggestion, not an ultimatum. Tally left after her visit with her mind more at ease. I thought Della might do the same for you.”

“Tally’s problems were with Court du Chaud’s ghost, not a man who wants to elope instead of spending money on a wedding.” Claire was obviously still arguing with her fiancé of one month about their upcoming spring nuptials.

“Randy still being a cheapskate?” A funny turn of events, considering the way he’d tossed money around before meeting Claire.

“I only plan to get married once in my life. I’d like the full designer gown, doves, balloons and ribbons package, ya know?” Claire sighed. “I think I liked Randy better when he believed money could buy happiness.”