Deaths of Jocasta Read online

  Synopsis

  Micky Knight, a hard-hitting, tough-talking dyke detective, has been hired to provide security for a party at an old country mansion. It should be easy—a perfect spring evening, mild weather, and women everywhere. Suddenly another woman shows up—brutally murdered, left to die in the surrounding woods. The police find a prime suspect when the body of yet another victim is found in the clinic of Dr. Cordelia James, a woman whom Micky has a very personal reason to defend. Micky struggles against demons, past and present, in her death-defying search for the murderer. (reprint)

  Deaths of Jocasta

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  Acclaim for J.M. Redmann’s Micky Knight Series

  Death of a Dying Man

  “Set with wrenching reality against the backdrop of a city whose soul has been ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, Redmann’s…Death of a Dying Man…is a riveting and emotionally complex novel—weaving together a dying man’s poignant last wish, the pain of a crumbling lesbian romance, and (of course) a murder—is a virtuoso literary whodunit.” —Richard Labonte, Q Syndicate

  “Mickey Knight is back and how! J.M. Redmann is one of the top mystery writers today, bar none.”—Greg Herren, author of the Scott Bradley mystery series

  The Intersection of Law and Desire

  Lambda Literary Award Winner

  San Francisco Chronicle Editor’s Choice for the year

  Profiled on Fresh Air, hosted by Terry Gross, and selected for book reviewer Maureen Corrigan’s recommended holiday book list.

  “Superbly crafted, multi-layered…One of the most hard-boiled and complex female detectives in print today.”—San Francisco Chronicle (An Editor’s Choice selection for 1995)

  “Fine, hard-boiled tale-telling.”—Washington Post Book World

  “An edge-of-the-seat, action-packed New Orleans adventure… Micky Knight is a fast-moving, fearless, fascinating character…The Intersection of Law and Desire will win Redmann lots more fans.” —New Orleans Times-Picayune

  “Crackling with tension…an uncommonly rich book…Redmann has the making of a landmark series.”—Kirkus Review

  “Perceptive, sensitive prose; in-depth characterization; and pensive, wry wit add up to a memorable and compelling read.”—Library Journal

  “Powerful and page turning…A rip-roaring read, as randy as it is reflective…Micky Knight is a to-die-for creation…a Cajun firebrand with the proverbial quick wit, fast tongue, and heavy heart.”—Lambda Book Report

  Lost Daughters

  “Few writers understand the human heart as well as J.M. Redmann. Lost Daughters manages the rare trick of being a mystery packed with surprises as well as a moving exploration of the pain of loss between parents and children. Don’t start reading Lost Daughters at bedtime unless you plan to be up all night.”—Val McDermid, Gold Dagger– winning author of The Mermaids Singing

  “A sophisticated, funny, plot-driven, character-laden murder mystery set in New Orleans…as tightly plotted a page-turner as they come… One of the pleasures of Lost Daughters is its highly accurate portrayal of the real work of private detection—a standout accomplishment in the usually sloppily conjectured world of thriller-killer fiction. Redmann has a firm grasp of both the techniques and the emotions of real-life cases—in this instance, why people decide to search for their relatives, why people don’t, what they fear finding and losing…and Knight is a competent, tightly wound, sardonic, passionate detective with a keen eye for detail and a spine made of steel.”—San Francisco Chronicle

  “Redmann’s Mickey Knight series just gets better…For finely delineated characters, unerring timing, and page-turning action, Redmann deserves the widest possible audience.”—Booklist, starred review “…tastefully sexy…”—USA Today

  “Like fine wine, J.M. Redmann’s private eye has developed interesting depths and nuances with age…Redmann continues to write some of the fastest-moving action scenes in the business…In Lost Daughters, Redmann has found a winning combination of action and emotion that should attract new fans—both gay and straight—in droves.”—New Orleans Times-Picayune “An admirable, tough PI with an eye for detail and the courage, finally, to confront her own fear. Recommended.”—Library Journal

  “The best mysteries are character-driven and still have great moments of atmosphere and a tightly wound plot. J.M. Redmann succeeds on all three counts in this story of a smart lesbian private eye who unravels the fascinating evidence in a string of bizarre cases, involving missing children, grisly mutilations, and a runaway teen driven from her own home because she is gay.”—Outsmart

  By the Author

  Death by the Riverside

  Deaths of Jocasta

  The Intersection of Law and Desire

  Lost Daughters

  Death of a Dying Man

  Water Mark

  Deaths of Jocasta

  © 1992 J.M. Redmann. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-073-9

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.,

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Bold Strokes Edition: February 2009

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design Bold Strokes Books Graphics

  Chapter 1

  I couldn’t find a seat on the streetcar. It was late afternoon and people were going home from work. I ended up standing near the back. More people got on at each stop. A briefcase was poking into the back of my knee. I thought about “accidentally” stepping on his toes when we jostled to a stop, and I heard a distinctly female “umph” from the briefcase carrier. Saved by her sex. She pressed closer to me as more people crowded on. Definitely female. I could feel her breasts through my T-shirt. The man in front of me got off. He was replaced by a well-dressed woman carrying, you guessed it, a briefcase. She was good looking, career woman style. Long dark hair and a discreet amount of makeup. The streetcar started up with a jerk and threw her into me. I was surrounded by breasts. She smiled an apology to me for having to stand so close. I just smiled back.

  “Sorry,” she said as another jerk smashed her breasts into mine again.

  “No problem,” I answered.

  She smiled at me again. I could feel the warm breath of the woman behind me tickling my neck. Her tits were still firmly planted under my shoulder blades. The woman in front was staring at me with an arch to her brow that I had to be misinterpreting.

  I was dressed in a T-shirt and faded jeans, my only accouterment small pink triangle earrings. It doesn’t pay to be too blatant in the Crescent City; we’re still below the Mason-Dixon line.

  “Do you mind if I hold on here?” asked the woman behind me as she reached around me. Her arm was pressing into the hollow just above my hip, but there wasn’t much else to hold on to back here.

  “No, not at all,” I said, “I understand holding on.”

  “I’ll bet you do,” she whispered in my ear.

  The trolley jerked again, whether stopping or starting, I wasn’t sure. Both women were pressing into me, proving to be quite a distraction.

  Cal
m down, Micky. When do you go after ever-so-well-dressed career types? Celibacy does have some drawbacks. Like looking at women who used to be a definite no and thinking maybe… I had been celibate for a long time if a briefcase was becoming a maybe.

  The car jerked again and the woman behind me lost her grip and was forced to hold on to me. Her hand was on my hip. Then her crotch pushed against my ass. It couldn’t be intentional, I told myself. The woman in front of me smiled like she knew what was going on behind me.

  This is weird, I thought. However, not weird enough to induce me to stop it. From the feel of it, she had a nice crotch.

  Then the woman in front lifted her briefcase, using it to hide the movements of her other hand. I knew what she was doing. Her hand was on my thigh and moving up.

  “The next stop. You could get off very easily,” she said to me in a husky undertone. Her hidden hand was defining some of the various meanings of “get off.”

  “I could,” I answered.

  The trolley rolled to a halt. She led the way off. The woman behind me was still behind me. I glanced at her. A stunning redhead. She winked when she caught me looking. The dark-haired woman led the way to a side street, then motioned us into a hidden courtyard.

  It never occurred to me to wonder what I was getting into, probably because, with only two dollars in my wallet, robbery wasn’t a big worry. The only other thing these women could want me for was my body. And I had no problem with that.

  The redhead closed the gate to the courtyard. Both women dropped their briefcases off to one side. The dark-haired woman got behind me, putting her arms around me to unbuckle my belt. As she was undoing my pants, red hair, now in front, pulled up my T-shirt, exposing my breasts. First her hands, then her tongue and mouth covered them. Dark hair, having unzipped my jeans, was fingering the elastic of my panties, her lips and tongue echoing the movement of her fingers along the back of my neck.

  Red hair, still tonguing my breasts, unbuttoned her shirt, then unhooked her bra and pushed it out of the way, showing her pale breasts and very pink nipples. She pushed them very firmly against mine and started kissing me, tongue in cheek, hers in mine.

  Dark hair started going beyond the elastic. Red hair was still kissing me, the weight of her breasts a very pleasant warmth on mine. I felt her tongue start to trace my lips, moving slowly to my chin, another kiss, then her cold, wet nose on my cheek…

  Her cold, wet nose?

  Hepplewhite meowed. She was sitting on my chest. Kitty paws on my tits I don’t find terribly erotic. I had been asleep and she was trying to wake me up to feed her. She meowed again. I picked her up and deposited her on the floor. I hate cats who assume that their stomachs have priority over my erotic fantasies. I sat up, shaking myself awake.

  “Go catch a rat.” But as I said it, I was getting up and heading for the kitchen to get her some food. Hep has perfected a fingernails-on-chalkboard meow.

  I dumped a can of cat food into her bowl, then stumbled toward the bathroom, her official feeding ground. Needless to say, there was a nearly full bowl of food already there.

  The phone rang. I ignored my own reasons for going to the bathroom and went to answer it.

  “Well, well,” said a familiar voice, “this is the third time you’ve actually picked up the phone yourself. I almost miss talking to your machine.”

  “Call back and I’ll let you,” I replied.

  “No, thanks. You’re the one I want.”

  “Be still my beating heart. What can I do for you, besides the obvious?” I flirted. Joanne Ranson was my caller, a woman I’d been too drunk and scared to take as a lover when I’d had the chance a few years ago. Now she was involved with another woman.

  “How’s your leg?” she asked, her tone serious.

  “Getting better all the time. Soon I’ll have no excuse for not entering a marathon, except that I hate running. I went back to karate last week,” I replied. I had been wounded in the thigh. Joanne felt responsible since it was at her behest that I’d gotten involved to begin with. She was a detective sergeant with the NOPD.

  “Good. I’m glad to hear it. Nothing official or even dangerous this time. Idle curiosity, really.”

  “Yes?” I questioned. I wondered what Joanne had to ask me that she couldn’t get through her sources.

  “An invitation. You have, no doubt, heard of the big bash going on this weekend.”

  “Right,” I interjected.

  “I got an invitation.”

  “So? Most people worry when they don’t get one.”

  “How did my name get on that list? Both Alex and Cordelia swear they had nothing to do with it. They’re the only women I know with those connections.”

  Alex was Alexandra Sayers, Joanne’s lover. Cordelia James was…well, Cordelia was a long story.

  “I’d like to know,” Joanne continued, “how my name came to Emma Auerbach’s notice. Can you nose around a little for me?”

  “Sure. Are you going?”

  “Alex didn’t give me much choice. Danny and Elly will also be there. I’ll save you a piece of cake.”

  “No need.” I was enjoying this. “I’ll be there.”

  “Oh?”

  Trying to contain my smugness, I replied, “As a matter of fact, I put your name on the invitation list.”

  “You?”

  “Me.”

  “You know Emma Auerbach?”

  “Yep.”

  “Explain,” Joanne said when I didn’t elaborate.

  “Long story and I have to pee. See you there. Say hi to Alex for me.”

  “I will.”

  “By the way, how’s Cordelia? I haven’t seen her in a while,” I said, trying to be casual.

  “I thought you had to pee,” Joanne countered.

  “True,” I said, not wanting to appear too insistent. “See you in the country.”

  “She seems all right. Very caught up in her work. See you,” Joanne answered, then hung up.

  I went to the bathroom, finally, to pee.

  I tried not to think about Cordelia. I had been trying not to think about her for the last few months. Ever since she had walked down my stairs and out of my life, saying she needed time to think. She had called once, leaving a message on my answering machine saying, “I’m sorry, I still don’t know. I can’t be less than honest with you, and I can’t give you a better answer than that. I hope you’re doing well.”

  I answered my phone every time it rang, hoping it would be her. But it never was.

  Get on with your life, Micky, I told myself as I always did whenever I thought about her. She’s way beyond your reach.

  I roused myself, ran a comb through my wild curls, then headed for the grocery store to get enough cat food to satisfy Hepplewhite, at least for a few days.

  Every year, on the last weekend in May, Emma Auerbach gives a huge party at her country place. Everybody who is anybody in gay New Orleans is there. Men and women are invited to the Saturday night festivities, but only women get invitations to stay the weekend.

  I, however, wasn’t invited; I was working, although I strongly suspected that Emma had hired me to do security more as a favor to my bank account than out of any real need for protection. She insisted that I call her Emma, so I did, always feeling like a kid trying to wear her mother’s shoes when I said it. She was in her sixties now and would always be Miss Auerbach to me. I would do anything that she asked because, more than anyone, Emma Auerbach had saved my life. Not my life literally; perhaps I should say my soul.

  I walked up the stairs carrying a heavily loaded bag of cat food. My office/apartment was on the third floor of a yet-to-be-gentrified building. Yet-to-be-made-livable some of us complained.

  My so-called office was the large room in the center of my apartment. Off to the left was the kitchen and the bedroom. On the right, a darkroom, the closet, and the bathroom. Not the best arrangement, but it worked for me. In other words, I could afford it.

  The door on the landing of
the third floor said M. Knight, Private Investigator. I blew some dust off the M. as I locked the door. I was on my way to Emma’s.

  Chapter 2

  The drive across Lake Pontchartrain is hard to describe. Boring might be a good place to start. Twenty-four miles of you, the lake, and a concrete bridge. My dismal Datsun huffed and puffed its way across. I could almost hear it chanting, “I think I can, I think I can.” Dry land was welcome. After forty-five minutes more of winding country roads I arrived at Emma’s place.

  She owned close to two hundred acres. Most of the land was left to itself. Only a few acres had been cut and cleared for the house, an elegant and understated country mansion. It was white clapboard, two stories with ivy twining up all three chimneys. There were several smaller cottages in back for guests.

  I parked my car behind the garage, then I went in search of Emma. Via the kitchen, of course. Rachel Parsons, a gourmet chef and Emma’s right-hand woman since probably before I was born, was taking one of a series of pecan pies out of the oven. I had spent many hours with Rachel in the kitchen, helping her and making myself useful, until I felt like I really did belong. And Rachel, with her patience and easy smile, became a refuge for the scared kid I was.

  She didn’t seem much older than when I had first met her, thirteen years ago, only a few traces of gray in her black hair giving a clue to passing time. She was still strong, capable, her back straight and shoulders broad, as I had always known them. Her hair was straightened and pulled back into a practical bun. Few wrinkles lined her face, her perfect skin marred only by a faint scar under her left ear. “White boys didn’t see anything wrong with throwing stones at little black girls, like we were plastic ducks at a traveling circus,” she had told me late one night, when it was just the two of us in the kitchen. It was the only time she ever mentioned it.