“Excellent is right,” Cash agrees. “I quite like the thought of Rick being penniless once he gets out of prison.”
“That’s assuming he lives long enough to get out,” I counter. “Rick doesn’t strike me as the kinda guy who’ll do well in lockup. His pride and ego are liable to get him in serious trouble straight outta the shoot.”
“From your lips to God’s ears.” Cash looks toward the ceiling.
“You don’t believe in God,” I remind him.
“Never hurts to cover my bases. Although, on second thought, I don’t want Rick taking the easy way out. I want him doing his time.”
“With him safe and sound behind bars and the cottage almost complete,” Maggie says, “you can move on from the past and start focusing on your future. Maybe start eating right.” She doesn’t have to mention that Cash barely touched his turtle soup or his shrimp and grits. We all took note of that. “Maybe start laying off the Gentleman Jack too,” she adds, staring at his rocks glass. It’s half full of whiskey.
Beneath the table, I nudge her foot.
If Cash catches wind of our plan to stage an intervention (or if he evensuspectswe might), he’ll go to ground like a damned mole, or lock himself inside his house. The trick to getting him to rehab will be catching him off guard. Attack him with love and concern when he least expects it.
I reckon Cash will immediately jump into an argument. (The man doesnotshy away from confrontation, that’s for damned sure.) But to my surprise, he ignores her. “Since we’re on the subject of moving on from the past, how do you feel now that the article about Dean and his dad has run?”
The article…
For two days, our story was the talk of the town. Then,TheTimes-Picayunereporter got a few police officers to go on the record detailing more of Sullivan’s corruption and the news cycle quickly moved on, forgetting all about us.
Maggie squints at him. “Nice segue.”
“Smoother than yours was,” he agrees with a slow grin.
Since she can’t argue the point, she answers his question. “Honestly? It feels a bit… I don’t know. Not anticlimactic exactly. But…useless maybe? Senseless? For ten years, all I wanted was to tell the truth. And now I have. But that doesn’t change the fact that two men are dead. And I don’t care if they were good men or bad men, because they were here and now they’re not, and I can’t help wondering…what was the point of it all?”
“That’s life for you,” Cash declares. “When it gives you what you want, you realize what you want isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Lord, that’s a depressing thought,” Maggie grumbles.
Cash pushes back his chair and raps his knuckles on the table. “On that note, let’s do what we came here to do.”
When he stands and walks toward the staircase, Maggie looks at me with a fierce frown. “Thanks for the help a minute ago. You might’ve jumped in and seconded my opinion about it being a good time for him to start taking better care of himself.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t spook him,” I tell her. “We gotta play our cards close to our vest if we wanna—”
“Whatever.” She tosses her napkin atop the table and stands.
I’m about as cranky as a barrel full of snakes by the time I join her and Cash at the foot of the stairs. But Cash seems oblivious. He wiggles his eyebrows and says, “You guys ready for some paranormal activity?”
Muriel’s Jackson Square, like many of the historical spots in the city, boasts a resident ghost.
The building was originally a holding facility for slaves, but in the early 1800s, a gentleman by the name of Pierre Jourdan purchased the property and lovingly refitted it into a showpiece of a home. Unfortunately, old Jourdan had himself a bit of a gambling problem. He lost the house in a hand of poker. So the story goes, he was so devastated on the day he was due to move out, he killed himself in a room on the second floor.
The restaurant owners embraced the building’s macabre past by turning the second-floor room where Jourdan committed suicide into what’s known as the Séance Lounge. They even go so far as to set up a table for Jourdan every night, complete with wine and bread, should his spirit decide to partake.
As I follow Cash and Maggie up the stairs, I ask Cash, “Why’d you put this on the list of excursions anyway? You usually don’t go in for this kinda stuff.”
As soon as I say the words, I realize how wrong I am. Cash didn’tusedto go in for this stuff. Lately, however, he seems to be seeking out the more otherworldly attractions of our fair city.
“Maybe I’ve never gone in for this stuff because I never had a reason to go in for it,” he says.
“And what’s your reason now?”
He points to the scar above his temple, which doesn’t look half bad compared to the still-healing wound across his forehead. “When you get as close to death as I did, you start to wonder if it’s possible thereissomething more. Or maybe you start tohopethere is.”
An uneasy feeling scratches at the base of my skull. It’s like there’s something I’m missing. Something at the edge of my vision, but every time I turn to look at it, it disappears.
